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enFrom Robert Southey, Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (London, 1807)http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/southey_prophecy/HTML/Espriella
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<h3>From Robert Southey, <span xmlns="" class="titlem">Letters from England by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella</span> (London, 1807)</h3>
<div class="section" id="body.1_div.1_div.1"><p class=""><strong>1</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;I had prepared for you an account of a pseudo-prophet who excited much attention in London here at the beginning of the last war, when, almost by accident, I was made acquainted with some singular circumstances which are in some manner connected with him, and which therefore should previously be told. These circumstances are as authentic as they are extraordinary, and supply a curious fact for the history of the French Revolution.</p><p class=""><strong>2</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;We were talking one evening of the Abb&#233; Barruel&#8217;s proofs of a conspiracy against the governments, religion and morality of Christendom. <a href="#1">&#160;[1]</a><a name="1back">&#160;</a> A friend of J.&#8217;s said, there was about as much truth in it as in one of Madame Scudery&#8217;s romances;<a href="#2">&#160;[2]</a><a name="2back">&#160;</a> the characters introduced were real persons, to whom false motives and manners were imputed; a little of what was ascribed to them had really occurred, but the whole plot, colouring and costume of the book were fictitious. It was a work, said he, written to serve the purposes of a party, with the same spirit and the same intent as those which in old times led to such absurd and monstrous calumnies against the Jews; and had its intent succeeded, there would have been a political St. Bartholomew&#8217;s day in England. True it was that a society had existed whose object was to change or to influence the governments of Europe; it was well organized and widely extended, but enthusiasm, not infidelity, was the means which they employed.</p><p class=""><strong>3</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In proof of this he stated the sum of what I shall relate more at length from the book to which he referred as his authority, and which I obtained from him the next morning. Its title is this,&#8212;<span xmlns="" class="titlem">A revealed Knowledge of some Things that will speedily be fulfilled in the World, communicated to a Number of Christians brought together at Avignon, by the Power of the Spirit of God from all Nations; now published by his Divine Command, for the Good of all Men, by John Wright his Servant, and one of the Brethren. London, printed in Year of Christ</span> 1794. It is one of those innumerable pamphlets which, being published by inferior booksellers, and circulating among sectarians and fanatics, never rise into the hands of those who are called the public, and escape the notice of all the literary journals. They who peruse them do it with a zeal which may truly be called consuming; they are worn out like a schoolboy grammar; the form in which they are sent abroad, without covers to protect them, hastens their destruction, and in a few years they disappear for ever.</p><p class=""><strong>4</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<a class="link_ref" href="/editions/southey_prophecy/HTML/people.html#WrightJohn" title="John Wright">John Wright</a>, the author of this narrative, was a working carpenter of Leeds in Yorkshire; a man of strong devotional feelings, who seems, like the first Quakers, to have hungered and thirsted after religious truth in a land where there was none to impart it. Some travelling Swedenborgian preachers having heated his imagination, he was desirous of removing to London to find out the New Jerusalem Church.<a href="#3">&#160;[3]</a><a name="3back">&#160;</a> It was no easy thing for a labouring man with a large family to remove to such a distance: however, by working over hours he saved money enough to effect it. The New Jerusalem Church did not satisfy him; every thing was too definite and formal, too bodily and gross for a mind of his complexion. But it so happened that at this place of worship he entered into talk with a converted Jew,<a href="#4">&#160;[4]</a><a name="4back">&#160;</a> who, when he learnt his state of mind, and that he expected the restoration of the Jews would shortly be accomplished, said to him, I will tell you of a man who is just like yourself;&#8212;his name is <a class="link_ref" href="/editions/southey_prophecy/HTML/people.html#BryanWilliam" title="William Bryan">William Bryan</a>, and he lives in such a place.</p><p class=""><strong>5</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bryan was a journeyman copperplate-printer. J.&#8217;s friend saw him once at the house of one of the Brotherists; <a href="#5">&#160;[5]</a><a name="5back">&#160;</a> he says that before he saw him he had heard of his resemblance to the pictures of our Lord, but that it was so striking as truly to astonish him. These features, his full clear and gentle eye, the beauty of his complexion, which would have been remarkable even in a girl, and the voice, in which words flowed from him with such unaffected and natural eloquence as to remind the hearer of the old metaphorical description of oratory, united to produce such an effect upon his believers as you may conceive, considering that they were credulous, and he himself undoubtedly sincere. Wright had now found a man after his own heart. They were both Quietists, whom for want of a guide their own good feelings led astray, and their experiences, he says, operated with each other, as face answers face in a glass.</p><p class=""><strong>6</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bryan told him of a society of prophets at Avignon,<a href="#6">&#160;[6]</a><a name="6back">&#160;</a> assembled there from all parts of the world. This was in the autumn of 1788. In the January of the ensuing year Wright mistook strong inclination for inspiration, and thought the Spirit directed him to join them. The same spirit very naturally sent him to communicate this to Bryan, whom he found possessed with the same impression. Neither of them had money to leave with their families, or to support themselves upon the journey, and neither of them understood a word of French. Both were determined to go&#8212;Bryan that night, Wright the following morning&#8212;such being their implicit obedience to the impulse within them, that the one would not wait, nor the other hasten. Before his departure Bryan called upon a friend, who said to him, &#8216;William, I have had it in my mind to ask if thou wert not sometimes in want of money.&#8217; He acknowledged that it was this want which now brought him there; and the friend gave him four guineas. If this same friend was the person who first told him of the society at Avignon, as may reasonably be suspected, the whole collusion will be clear. One guinea he left with his wife, who was at that time in child-bed, gave half a guinea to Wright to carry him to Dover, and set off.</p><p class=""><strong>7</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Bryan&#8217;s wife, not being in a state of belief, was greatly offended with Wright, thinking that if it had not been for him her husband would not have left her. His own wife was in a happier temper of mind, and encouraged him to go. She had a son by a former husband who was some little support to her, and who acquiesced in the necessity of this journey. He seems indeed to have communicated something of his own fervour to all about him. A young man with whom he was intimate bought him several things for his journey, and gave him a guinea; this same person befriended his family during his absence. At three in the morning he rose to depart: his son-in-law prepared breakfast, and they made the watchman who had called him partake of it, for it was severely cold. &#8216;I then&#8217;, says Wright, &#8216;turned to my children, who were all fast asleep, and kissed them, and interceded with the great and merciful God, relating to him their situation, in which, for his sake, they were going to be left without any outward dependence;&#8212;and at that time some of them were lying on a bed of shavings that I used to bring from my shop; at the same time imploring him that he would be pleased to bless them, and if one friend failed, another might be raised up, as I did not know whether I ever should see them any more; for although our first journey was to Avignon, we did not know it would end there&#8217;.</p><p class=""><strong>8</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;He then went to Bryan&#8217;s wife, whom his own was nursing in child-bed. The poor woman&#8217;s resentment had now given way, the quiet self-devotion of her husband and his friend had almost persuaded her to believe also; she burst into tears when she saw him, and saluted him, as he says, in the fear and love of God, in which she bade him remember her to her husband. Wright then went to the coach. Soon after they left London it began to rain and snow, and he was on the outside. He was of a sickly habit, always liable to take cold, and had at this time a bad cough. A doubt came upon him that if the Lord had sent him he would certainly have caused it to be fine weather. Besides this, he began to fear that Bryan would already have crost the channel, in which case when he got to Dover he should have no money to pay his passage. Was it not better therefore to turn back? But the testimony of God&#8217;s power in his heart, he says, was greater than all these thoughts.</p><p class=""><strong>9</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The wind had been contrary, and detained Bryan. They crossed over to Calais, took some food at an inn there, and got their money changed, inquired the names of bread, wine, and sleeping, in the language of the country, and which way they were to go, and then set off on their journey. They travelled on foot to Paris. Wright&#8217;s feet were sorely blistered; but there was no stopping, for his mind was bound in the spirit to travel on. They carried their burthen by turns when both were able, but it generally fell upon Bryan as the stronger man. Change of climate, however, aided probably by the faith which was in him, removed Wright&#8217;s cough. Their funds just lasted to Paris; here Bryan had an acquaintance, to whose house they went. This man had received a letter to say who were coming, and that they were bad men, Wright in particular, whom it advised him to send back. As you may suppose he was soon fully satisfied with them&#8212;he entertained them three days, and then dismissed them, giving them five louis d&#8217;or to bear them on. The whole journal of their way is interesting: it relates instances of that subsiding of overwrought feelings which bodily exhaustion produces, and which enthusiasts call desertion; of natural thoughts and fears recurring, remembrances of home, and depression which sometimes occasioned self-suspicion and half repentance:&#8212;with these symptoms the Church is well acquainted, as common to the deluded, and to those who are in truth under the influence of divine inspiration, and they prove the sincerity of this narrative.</p><p class=""><strong>10</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;At length they came in sight of Avignon. They washed some linen in the river, sat down under the bushes till it was dry, then put it on; and, having thus made their appearance as decent as they could, proceeded to the house of the prophets, to which as it appears they had brought with them a sufficient direction. The door was opened by one of the brethren and by a person who could speak English, and who had arrived there a day or two before from another part of the world. After they had washed and shaved, they were taken across the street to another house and shown into a large room, where there was a table spread nearly the whole length; they were told that table was provided by the Lord, and when they wanted any thing to eat or to drink they were to go there, and they would find a servant ready to wait upon them. The brethren also provided them with cloth and whatever else they needed, and with money to give to the poor, saying they had orders from the Lord to do so. In a short time their Paris friend arrived, and was admitted a member of the society before them, that he might be their interpreter. I wish the form of initiation had been given. They met every evening to commemorate the death of our Lord by eating bread and drinking wine. Very often, says Wright, when we have been sitting together, the furniture in the room has been shaken as though it were all coming to pieces; and upon inquiring what was the cause, we were told that it announced the presence of angels; when these were not heard the brethren were always afraid that something was amiss, and so inquired at the Word of the Lord.</p><p class=""><strong>11</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;You will easily suppose that they had orders to keep to society secret till the appointed time. I much wish that the book had stated how their answers from the Lord were received, but on this it is silent. The drift and character of the society are, however, sufficiently manifested by the Extracts which Wright has published from their Journals, and of which I here subjoin enough to satisfy you:</p><div class="blockquote">&#8216;You will soon see the pride of the Mahometan in the field: several sovereigns will unite to lay it low. It is then that the great light will appear. These perfidious enemies of the name of God will keep themselves for a time in their obstinacy, and in the mean time will grow up he who shall destroy them. Before the end of this year they will begin to show their fierceness, and you will hear of extraordinary things and memorable feats. You will hear that the world is filled with trouble and dissension; father, son, relations, friends, all will be in motion; and it is in this year (1789) that all will have its beginning.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;Remember that the face of the world will be changed, and you shall see it restored to its first state. The thrones shall be overturned, the earth shall be furrowed and change its aspect. They who shall be alive at that time will envy the fate of the dead.</div><div class="blockquote">The world will very soon be filled with trouble. Every where people will experience misfortunes. I announce it to you before-hand. The shepherd will forsake his flock; the sheep will be dispersed. He will oppress another land, and the nations will rise up in arms.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;You will learn very soon that a part of the world is in confusion; that the chiefs of nations are armed one against another. The earth will be overflowed with blood. You will hear of the death of several sovereigns; they give themselves up to luxury, they live in pleasures, but at last one of them will fall and make an unhappy end.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;All the events of this century have been foreseen, and no century has been distinguished by so many prodigies, but the ensuing will be filled with much greater still.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;The fire is kindled, the moment is come, the Mahometan is going to fall. Asia and Africa are staggering; fear pursues them, and they have a glimpse of the fate that awaits them.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;The cross of Jesus Christ shall be set up and triumph in those vast countries where it has been so long despised. Then Palestine will become again the most fortunate country on the earth; it shall be the centre of the faith of which it was the cradle, and from thence faith will spread itself all over the earth. All the people will embrace it. The world will become again what it was in the beginning. The enlightened Jews will embrace the Catholic faith. All people will acknowledge God, the only true God. They will be guided by one only Pastor, and governed by one sole Master.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;The second Zion has contributed the most to misguide the spirits of men. She has introduced new Gentiles still more monstrous than those who have reigned upon the earth. She only wants the statues of the Gods to resemble the ancient times. Yea, they have been replaced by these carnal divinities to which they render a sacrilegious adoration, and lavish an incense to them which they refuse to God.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;The end of this century will be a series of calamities of the people. Very few men are struck with the rapid decline of the present age. All the nations will be enlightened to see their dangerous errors. They will acknowledge how much they have been deceived by the masters who have instructed them, and they will be desolated at the thoughts of having lost so precious a treasure for having believed such rascals. But at the marked time how many errors will they not abjure, when our children every where, in the name of God, shall make their impious and monstrous errors disappear!&#8212;And thou, Crescent, who so much at this day applaudest thyself, the lustre with which thou shinest is soon to be eclipsed;&#8212;thy unjust conquests have long enough spun out the time of thy empire, and thy power from one pole to another is far enough extended. Thou dost not suspect that thy ruin is so near, and thou dost not know him who is growing up to operate it.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;Here is the time in which God will break the laws made by the children of the earth. Here is the time wherein he will reprove the science of men, and here is the time of his justice. This is the time that we must believe all those who announce the new reign of the Lord, for his spirit is with them.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;The ages have not now long to linger for the accomplishment of the promises of the Eternal.&#8212;The Eternal calls the times which walk in the shadows and days of darkness, without light and without strength, to come and change the face of the world, and commence his new reign. This is the time of the new Heavens and the new Earth.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;The Eternal has spoken, I shall simplify all things for the happiness of my elect. The moment is at hand when the confusion of languages shall no more be an obstacle to the knowledge of the truth.</div><div class="blockquote">When the impious and his superb eagle in his fury will dare to declare war against the God of Heaven, every thing will give way immediately to his pride. He will dare to make victims for himself among the saints whom Heaven has chosen; he will dare to profane their asylums, to appropriate to himself the gifts of the Eternal by the blackest of crimes, and by his success strengthening his pride he will believe himself master of the world. Then&#8212;then&#8212;Heaven will stop him: a feeble child will subdue his valour, and his fall will testify that in the sight of the Eternal there is no other power but the power of his arm.</div><div class="blockquote">&#8216;Already the measure is filled; already the times are accomplished, and the reign of the Word is at hand. Terror will precede to enlighten the blind who go astray, to humble the obstinate high-minded men, and to punish the impious.&#8217;</div>
These are no common prophecies. Honest fanaticism has had no share in manufacturing them. Vague as the language necessarily is, there is an end and aim in it not to be mistaken; and it is almost startling to observe how much of what was designed has taken place, and how much may still be applied to these immediate times.
<p class=""><strong>12</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Among these communications &#8216;For the Benefit and Instruction of all Mankind&#8217;, are others which are addressed to Wright and Bryan, and to those who, like them, were the unsuspecting tools of the society. I copy them with their cyphers and forms.</p><blockquote class="blockquote"><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em></div><div class="center">February 9, 1789.</div><div class="indent1">H. W. We supplicate thee to give us thy orders about the two Englishmen B. and W. who arrived here on Thursday the 19th instant.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer</em>.</div><div class="indent1">O thou who walkest before them to show them the way, Son of the Voice, tell them that very soon the instruction will grow in their souls; they will believe it and love it. Then, Son of the Voice, I shall let thee know what Heaven ordains about their fate.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em>.</div><div class="center">March 18, 1789. By 2. I. 9.</div><div class="indent1">H. W. Let me know the moment in which B. and W. should be consecrated.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer</em>.</div><div class="indent1">Son of the Voice, fidelity and happiness will in the first instance be the fruit of their union, the second will fill them with love and zeal. The moment hastens that is to call them near to us and to you.</div></blockquote><p class="">Some things seem to have been inserted in their journal in condescension to the weaker brethren, who required to be amused. Such as the following instances:&#8212;</p><blockquote class="blockquote"><div class="indent1">&#8216;In the month of June, 1789, we received a letter from the Union at Rome, which informed us that the weather was as cold there as it is in England in the month of January, and the Archangel Raphael asked the brethren and sisters if the cold made them uneasy, and said, Have a little patience, and the weather will be warm enough.</div><div class="indent1">&#8216;The 17th of June, 1789, we received a letter from the Union at Rome, in which they informed us of a sister, the daughter of a Turk, whom Brother Brimmore baptized at Silesia, in the dominions of the king of Prussia, between ten and fifteen years ago; after having lived some time in the enjoyment of the Christian faith, she was suddenly taken by her father, and carried to Alexandria in Egypt, which is in the dominions of the Turk, where she lived with her father in much sorrow and trouble. After her father was dead she was ordered by the Archangel Raphael to dress herself in a soldier&#8217;s dress, and fly into a Christian country; which she did, and got aboard a Spanish ship, and from this date has been between two and three months at sea.&#8217;</div></blockquote><p class="">But though the society occasionally accommodated itself to the capacity of the weaker brethren, its oracles were more frequently delivered to correct troublesome credulity, or repress more troublesome doubts.</p><blockquote class="blockquote"><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em>.</div><div class="center">April 12, 1789.</div><div class="indent1">H. W. The three knocks which I. 4. 7. heard in the night, was it any thing supernatural?</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer</em>.</div><div class="center">To 2. I. 9.</div><div class="indent1">Ask no more questions, if thou hast none to make of more importance.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em>.</div><div class="center">April 14, 1789.</div><div class="indent1">H. W. If it please thee, I. 4. 7. would be glad to know if the offering which he made on the mountain was acceptable to the Lord his God.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer</em>.</div><div class="indent1">If Wisdom hath called thee, if Wisdom hath been thy guide, my son why dost thou stop? Leave to thy God the care of thy conduct; forget&#8212;forget thyself in approaching to him, and his light will enlighten thy soul, and thy spirit shall no more make the law. Believe&#8212;believe, my son, that docility is the way which leadeth to knowledge; that with love; and simplicity thou shalt have nothing to fear from the snares of Hell, and that Heaven cannot lead thee astray, for it is Heaven which hath marked to thee thy route.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em>.</div><div class="center">July 8, 1789.</div><div class="indent1">H. W. I. 4. 7. prays to know if it is the will of Heaven that he should cause his wife to come with Duch&#233;<a href="#7">&#160;[7]</a><a name="7back">&#160;</a> to be consecrated.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer.</em></div><div class="indent1">Heaven sees thy motive, my son, and approves thy zeal: but in order that it may take place ************* do not think of it; thy hope is vain.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em>.</div><div class="center">April 16, 1789.</div><div class="indent1">I. 2. 3. prays the H. W. to let him know if the Eternal has accepted of his incense.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer</em>.</div><div class="indent1">Raphael is the spirit which thy heart followed, my son, when thou camest into these countries to seek for science and rest: but the spirit which confuses thy idea is not the spirit of Raphael. Mistrust, son that art called, the father of lies. Submit thy spirit to my voice. Believe&#8212;believe, my son, and thy God forgives thee, and then thy incense is accepted, and thy return will cover thee with glory.</div><div class="center">August 11, 1789.</div><div class="center">for the B. 12 April, 1756. Of I. 2. 3.</div><div class="ab">C. 24 March.</div><div class="indent1">April 1.</div><div class="indent1">If the ardour which animates thee gives at last to thy heart over thy spirit the victory and the empire; if thy desire renounces to discover, before the time, the secret of the mysteries which simple reason is not able to conceive, nothing can, my son, convey an obstacle to that happiness which awaits thee.</div><div class="indent1">Walk without fear, and chase from thy soul the deceiving spirit who wants to lead thee astray. Believe&#8212;believe, my son, every thing that I reveal to our elect in the name of the Eternal, and the Eternal will make thee the forerunning instrument of his glory in the places where his clemency wants to pardon those of thy nation whom the enemy seduces by his prestiges.</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Question</em>.</div><div class="center">August 21, 1789.</div><div class="center">I. 4. 7. prays the H. W. to inform him if it is the will of Heaven for him also to return with I. 2. 3.*</div><div class="ab">* [I. 4. 7. and I. 2. 3 seem to mean the two Englishmen. H. W. is evidently Holy Word.]</div><div class="center"><em xmlns="">Answer</em>.</div><div class="indent1">Yes. Son called, thou canst yet hearken to what I have to say unto thee. Thy fate is in thy hands. It will be great if thou makest haste to offer to thy God who chooseth thee the vain efforts of a useless knowledge, when it is only necessary to obey. Forget&#8212;forget thy knowledge: it fatigues thy spirits, it hurts thy heart, and retards from thy soul the influence of Heaven. Renounce, in fine, to search into the sublime mysteries of thy God. Believe&#8212;believe, and the Eternal will bless thy return, and thy simplicity will confound the knowledge, the pride, and the prepossession of the senseless man, who believeth in his own wisdom much more than in the wisdom of his God.</div></blockquote><p class=""><strong>13</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The subject is so curious that I think you will be pleased to see the character of this mysterious society further exemplified by a few of the sentences, moral maxims, and spiritual instructions, which they delivered as from Heaven. The first is sufficiently remarkable:</p><div class="blockquote"><ul xmlns=""><li><span id="NA040A"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Woe to him who dares to cover a lie with the sacred name of the Eternal!</li><li><span id="NA040D"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;One ray of light is not the entire light.</li><li><span id="NA0410"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;A wise man is silent when he ought to be so.</li><li><span id="NA0413"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;It is to the simple of heart that the Eternal will grant the wisdom of the Spirit.</li><li><span id="NA0416"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;The night was before the day, the day is before the night.</li><li><span id="NA0419"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;When God commands, he who consulteth does not obey.</li><li><span id="NA041C"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;He who walketh alone easily goes astray.</li><li><span id="NA041F"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;To doubt, Is that believing? and to tremble, Is that to hope?</li><li><span id="NA0422"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;He who thinks himself wise lies to himself, deceives himself, goeth astray, and knoweth nothing.</li><li><span id="NA0425"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Shall man tremble when God supports him?</li><li><span id="NA0428"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;The repentance of the wise is in his works, that of the fool in his tear; &#8216;The child of man thinks of man, the child of God thinks of God; he must forget every thing else.</li><li><span id="NA042B"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Fear leads our spirit astray; by laying a weight upon our days it overturns wisdom, it intimidates nature, and the painful seeds of uneasiness and anguish take part in our hearts.</li><li><span id="NA042E"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Heaven explains itself sufficiently when it inspires.</li><li><span id="NA0431"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Wilt thou never hear my word with the ears of thy soul, and will thou never overturn the idol of mistrust that is in thy heart?</li><li><span id="NA0434"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;The Lord has placed the key of his treasure under the cup of bitterness.</li><li><span id="NA0437"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;The ark of God conveys death to those who make use of false keys.</li><li><span id="NA043A"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Who is that man, saith the Lord, that will not abandon his heart to me when I have promised to guide it?</li><li><span id="NA043D"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;I am One, and all that is in me is One.</li><li><span id="NA0440"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Remember, and remember well, that the Word is but One for who desires to comprehend; and there would be no more mysteries for man but for the vanity of his heart and the folly of his understanding.</li><li><span id="NA0443"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Is it in the tumult of the world that the voice of the Most High can enter into the heart?</li><li><span id="NA0446"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Do not attach any importance to your opinions: Of what avail to your fate are your very weak ideas?</li><li><span id="NA0449"><!--anchor--></span>&#8216;Forget all, O our friends, except Heaven and yourselves, to obey only what Heaven prescribes to you.&#8217;</li></ul></div><p class=""><strong>14</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;This narrative, and these extracts, require no comment. They prove incontestably the existence of a society of political Jesuits; they prove also, that however little may have been the religion of these men themselves, they were convinced how indispensably necessary it was for mankind; and that, instead of plotting to break up the system of social order by destroying faith and morals, faith was the engine which they employed to prepare society for some imaginary amelioration, forgetting that nothing which is founded upon delusion can be permanent.</p><p class=""><strong>15</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The two Englishmen remained at Avignon six months, and were then informed by the Spirit that they might return. The Brethren supplied them with money, so that they went back with more comfort than they came, and had a handsome sum left when they landed in England, where they both returned to their former employments, expecting the accomplishment of the mighty changes which had been foretold. The Revolution brake out.&#8212;They who had raised the storm could not direct it: they became its victims&#8212;and knavery reaped what fanaticism had sown, as they who lag in the assault enter the breach over the bodies of the brave who have won the passage for them. What became of the Avignon society Heaven knows. The honest dupes whom they had sent abroad, fully prepared to welcome any novelty as the commencement of the Millennium, were left to their own direction. A king of the Hebrews appeared in England, and Wright and Bryan were, as you may suppose, among the first to acknowledge him. They imagined that the appointed time was come, and published these secrets of the society which they had been ordered to keep concealed. Of the King of the Hebrews in my next.</p></div>
<div class="section" id="body.1_div.1_div.2">
<h4>LETTER LXIX.<br/><em xmlns="">Account of Richard Brothers</em>.</h4>
<p class=""><strong>1</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;MY FORMER letters must have shown you that these English, whom we are accustomed to consider as an unbelieving people, are in reality miserably prone to superstition; yet you will perhaps be surprised at the new instance which I am about to relate.</p>
<p class=""><strong>2</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;There started up in London about the beginning of the late war, a new pseudo-prophet, whose name was <a class="link_ref" href="/editions/southey_prophecy/HTML/people.html#BrothersRichard" title="Richard Brothers">Richard Brothers</a>, And who called himself King of the Hebrews, and Nephew of God. He taught that all existing souls had been created at the same time with Adam, and his system was, that they had all lived with him in Paradise, and all fallen with him in consequence of their joint transgression; for all things which they saw and knew were in God, and indeed were God, and they desired to know something besides God, in which desire they were indulged, fatally for themselves, for the only thing which is not God is Evil. Evil was thus introduced, and they for their punishment cast into hell, that is to say, upon this present earth; and in this hell they have remained from that time till now, transmigrating from one human body to another. But the term of their punishment is now drawing towards its close: the consummation of all things is at hand, and every one will then recover the recollection of all the scenes and changes through which he has passed. This knowledge has already been vouchsafed in part to Brothers himself, and it is thus that he explained the extraordinary relationship to the Almighty which he laid claim to, asserting that in the days of our Lord he was the son of James the brother of Christ. You know the heretics, in their hatred to virginity and to Mary the most pure, maintain that when Christ&#8217;s brethren are mentioned in the Gospels, the word is to be understood in its literal and carnal sense; consequently he was then the Nephew of the second Person in the Trinity.</p>
<p class=""><strong>3</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Human fancy, it has been said, cannot imagine a monster whose constituent parts are not all already in existence; it is nearly as impossible for a new heresy to be now devised, so prolific has human error been. This metempsychosis not only bears a general resemblance to that doctrine as held by the Orientals and by Pythagoras, <a href="#8">&#160;[8]</a><a name="8back">&#160;</a> but has been held in this peculiar heretical form by the old heretic Barules, and by the Flagellants of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.<a href="#9">&#160;[9]</a><a name="9back">&#160;</a></p>
<p class=""><strong>4</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Brothers had been a lieutenant in the navy, and was known to be insane; but when a madman calls himself inspired, from that moment the disorder becomes infectious. The society at Avignon had unintentionally trained up apostles for this man. Wright and Bryan had now for some years been looking for the kingdom of Christ, and teaching all within the circle of their influence to expect the same promised day. Of what had been announced to them much had been too truly accomplished. The world was indeed filled with troubles and dissension, the fire was kindled, the thrones of Europe were shaken, and one of its kings had been brought to an unhappy end, according to the prediction. The laws made by the children of the earth were broken, the reign of terror was begun, and the times disastrous to the full measure of their prophecies. They had been instructed to look for a miraculous deliverer and Lord of the earth, and here was one who laid claim to the character. There were however some difficulties. At Avignon they had been informed that he who was to be the Leader of the Faithful, and to overthrow the kingdom of the world, was at that time twelve years old, and living at Rome; even his name had been revealed. Neither in this, nor in age, nor country did Brothers answer the prophecy. One of these men<a href="#10">&#160;[10]</a><a name="10back">&#160;</a> therefore decided in his own mind that he was an impostor; he went to see him, with a full belief that whether he was so or not would be revealed to him during the interview, and he took a knife with him, with which, if his suspicions had been confirmed, he was resolved to deliver him such a message from the Lord as Ehud carried to the king of Eglon.<a href="#11">&#160;[11]</a><a name="11back">&#160;</a> Luckily for both parties, Brothers, who little knew the dangerous trial he was undergoing, supported his part so well that the desperate fanatic was converted.</p>
<p class=""><strong>5</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The new King of the Hebrews had not perhaps a single Jew among his believers. These people, who have in old times suffered well nigh as severely for their credulity in false Messiahs as for their rejection of the true one, are less disposed to lend ear to such delusions now than in any former time, and here than in any other country. Here they have no amelioration of their condition to wish for; the free exercise of their religion is permitted, what they gain they enjoy in security, and are protected by the state without the trouble of self-defence. The flesh pots of England are not less delicious than those of Egypt, and a land flowing with milk and honey not so attractive for the sons of the Synagogue as one which abounds with old clothes for the lower order, and loans and contracts for their wealthier brethren. The land of promise offers nothing so tempting to them as scrip and omnium.<a href="#12">&#160;[12]</a><a name="12back">&#160;</a> The King of the Hebrews therefore was not acknowledged by any of his own people; his scheme of pre-existence helped him out of this difficulty. He could tell if any person had been a Jew in any former stage of being, and even of what tribe; that of Judah, as the most favoured, he bestowed liberally upon his believers, and those whom he hoped to convert. He informed Mr. Pitt<a href="#13">&#160;[13]</a><a name="13back">&#160;</a> by letter that he was a Jew, some of the royal family were in like manner declared to be Jews, and J.&#8217;s friend received from Bryan the same flattering assurance.</p>
<p class=""><strong>6</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Besides the prophets from Avignon, Brothers succeeded in making two other useful and extraordinary disciples. The one, an engraver of first-rate skill in his art, who published a masterly portrait of him, with these words underneath, Fully <em xmlns="">believing this to be the man whom God hath appointed, I engrave his likeness</em>.<a href="#14">&#160;[14]</a><a name="14back">&#160;</a> This was to be seen in all the print-shops. Mr. Halhed was the other of these converts, a member of the house of commons, and one of the profoundest oriental scholars then living.<a href="#15">&#160;[15]</a><a name="15back">&#160;</a> This gentleman was in the early part of his life an unbeliever, and had attempted to invalidate the truths of holy writ by arguments deduced from Indian chronology. The study of Indian mythology brought him back to Christianity, and by a strange perversion of intellect the Trimourtee of the Hindoos<a href="#16">&#160;[16]</a><a name="16back">&#160;</a> convinced him of the doctrine of the Trinity; and as he recovered his faith he lost his wits. To the astonishment of the world he published a pamphlet avowing his belief that Richard Brothers was the Lion of the Tribe of Judah,<a href="#17">&#160;[17]</a><a name="17back">&#160;</a> and that in him the prophecies were speedily to be fulfilled.</p>
<p class=""><strong>7</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Brothers wrote letters to the king and to all the members of both houses of parliament, calling upon them to give ear to the word of God, and prepare for the speedy establishment of his kingdom upon earth. He announced to his believers his intention of speedily setting out for Jerusalem to take possession of his metropolis, and invited them to accompany him. Some of these poor people actually shut up their shops, forsook their business and their families, and travelled from distant parts of the country to London to join him, and depart with him whenever he gave the word. Before he went, he said, he would prove the truth of his mission by a public miracle, he would throw down his stick in the Strand at noon day, and it should become a serpent; and he affirmed that he had already made the experiment and successfully performed it in private. A manifest falsehood this, but not a wilful one; in like manner he said that he had seen the Devil walking leisurely up Tottenham-Court-road;&#8212;the man was evidently in such a state of mind that his waking dreams were mistaken for realities. He threatened London with an earthquake because of its unbelief, and at length named the day when the city should be destroyed. Many persons left town to avoid his threatened calamity; the day passed by, he claimed the merit of having prevailed in prayer and obtained a respite, and fixed another.</p>
<p class=""><strong>8</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The business was becoming serious. All the madmen and enthusiasts in England, a land wherein there is never any lack of them, made a common cause with this King of the Hebrews. Pamphlets in his favour swarmed from the press; the prophecy of some old heretic was raked up, which fixed the downfall of the church as destined now to be accomplished; and the number of the Beast was explained by Ludovicus XVI. One madman printed his dreams, another his day-visions; one had seen an angel come out of the sun with a drawn sword in his hand, another had seen fiery dragons in the air, and hosts of angels in battle array; these signs and tokens were represented in rude engravings, and the lower classes of people, to whose capacity and whose hungry superstition they were addressed, began to believe that the seven seals were about to be opened, and all the wonders in the Apocalypse would be displayed. Government at last thought fit to interfere, and committed Brothers to the national hospital for madmen.<a href="#18">&#160;[18]</a><a name="18back">&#160;</a> Mr. Halhed made a speech in parliament upon this occasion, the most extraordinary perhaps that ever was delivered to a legislative assembly.<a href="#19">&#160;[19]</a><a name="19back">&#160;</a> It was a calm and logical remonstrance against the illegality and unreasonableness of their proceedings. They had imprisoned this person as a madman, he said, because he announced himself as a prophet; but it was incumbent upon them to have fairly examined his pretensions, and ascertained their truth or falsehood, before they had proceeded against him in this manner. Brothers had appealed to the Holy Scriptures, the divine authority of which that house acknowledged; he appealed also to certain of his own predictions as contained in the letters which he had addressed to the king and his ministers;&#8212;let them be produced, and the question solemnly investigated as its importance deserved. According to the rules of the house of commons, no motion can be debated or put to the vote, unless it be seconded; Mr. Halhed found no one to second him, and his proposal was thus silently negatived.</p>
<p class=""><strong>9</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Thus easily and effectually was this wild heresy crushed. Brothers continued to threaten earthquakes, fix days for them, and prorogue them after the day was past; but his influence was at an end. The people had lost sight of him; and being no longer agitated by signs and tokens, dreams and denunciations, they forgot him. A few of his steadier adherents persisted in their belief, and comforted him and themselves by reminding him of Daniel in the lions&#8217; den, and of Jeremiah in the dungeon. He was lucky enough to find out better consolation for himself. There was a female lunatic in the same hospital, whom he discovered to be the destined Queen of the Hebrews; and as such announced her to the world. At present he and this chosen partner of the throne of David are in daily expectation of a miraculous deliverance, after which they are to proceed to Jerusalem to be crowned, and commence their reign. Plans and elevations of their palace and of the new Temple have been made for them, and are now being engraved for the public;<a href="#20">&#160;[20]</a><a name="20back">&#160;</a> and in these dreams they will probably continue as long as they live. Upon madmen of this stamp, experience has as little effect as hellebore. Their thoughts of the future are so delightful as they forget the past, and are well nigh insensible to the present just as all other objects near or distant appear darkened to him who has been looking at the sun. Their hope has neither fear nor doubt to allay it, and its intensity gives them a joy which could scarcely be exceeded by its accomplishment.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="body.1_div.1_div.3"><h4>LETTER LXX.<br/>
Account of Joanna Southcott.</h4><p class=""><strong>1</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;IN THE early part of the thirteenth century there appeared an English virgin in Italy, beautiful and eloquent, who affirmed that the Holy Ghost was incarnate in her for the redemption of women, and she baptized women in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of herself. Her body was carried to Milan and burnt there. An arch-heretic of the same sex and country is now establishing a sect in England, founded upon a not dissimilar and equally portentous blasphemy. The name of this woman is Joanna Southcott; she neither boasts of the charms of her forerunner, nor needs them. Instead of having an eye which can fascinate, and a tongue which can persuade to error by glossing it with sweet discourse, she is old, vulgar, and illiterate. In all the innumerable volumes which she has sent into the world, there are not three connected sentences in sequence, and the language alike violates common sense and common syntax. Yet she has her followers among the educated classes, and even among the beneficed clergy.<a href="#21">&#160;[21]</a><a name="21back">&#160;</a> &#8216;If Adam,&#8217; she says, &#8216;had refused listening to a foolish ignorant woman at first, then man might refuse listening to a foolish ignorant woman at last:&#8217;&#8212;and the argument is admitted by her adherents. When we read in romance of enchanted fountains, they are described as flowing with such clear and sparkling waters as tempt the traveller to thirst; here, there may be a magic in the draught, but he who can taste of so foul a stream must previously have lost his senses. The filth and the abominations of demoniacal witchcraft are emblematical of such delusions; not the golden goblet and bewitching allurements of Circe and Armida.<a href="#22">&#160;[22]</a><a name="22back">&#160;</a></p><p class=""><strong>2</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The patient and resolute obedience with which I have collected for you some account of this woman and her system, from a pile of pamphlets half a yard high, will, I hope, be imputed to me as a merit. Had the heretics of old been half as voluminous, and half as dull, St. Epiphanius would never have persevered through his task.<a href="#23">&#160;[23]</a><a name="23back">&#160;</a></p><p class=""><strong>3</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;She was born in Devonshire about the middle of the last century, and seems to have passed forty years of her life in honest industry, sometimes as a servant, at others working at the upholsterers&#8217; business, without any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was zealously attached to the Methodists. These people were equally well qualified to teach her the arts of imposture, or to drive her mad; or to produce in her a happy mixture of craziness and knavery, ingredients which in such cases are usually found in combination. She mentions in her books a preacher who frequented her master&#8217;s house, and, according to her account, lived in habits of adultery with the wife, trying at the same time to debauch the daughter, while the husband vainly attempted to seduce Joanna herself. This preacher used to terrify all who heard him in prayer, and make them shriek out convulsively. He said that he had sometimes, at a meeting, made the whole congregation lie stiff upon the floor till he had got the evil spirits out of them; that there never was a man so highly favoured of God as himself; that he would not thank God to make him any thing, unless he made him greater than any man upon earth, and gave him power above all men; and he boasted, upon hearing the death of one who had censured him, that he had fasted and prayed three days and three nights, beseeching God to take vengeance upon that man and send him to eternity. Where such impious bedlamites as this are allowed to walk abroad, it is not to be wondered at that madness should become epidemic.</p><p class=""><strong>4</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Joanna Southcott lived in a house which this man frequented, and where, notwithstanding his infamous life, his pretensions to supernatural gifts were acknowledged, and he was accustomed to preach and pray. The servants all stood in fear of him. She says, he had no power over her, but she used to think the room was full of spirits when he was in prayer; and he was so haunted that he never could sleep in a room by himself, for he said his wife came every night to trouble him: she was perplexed about him, fully believing that he wrought miracles, and wondering by what spirit he wrought them. After she became a prophetess herself, she discovered that this Sanderson was the false prophet in the Revelation, who is to be taken with the Beast, and cast alive with him into a lake of burning brimstone.</p><p class=""><strong>5</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Four persons have written to Joanna upon the subject of her pretended mission, each calling himself Christ! One Mr. Leach, a Methodist preacher, told her to go to the Lord in <em xmlns="">his name</em>, and tell the Lord that <em xmlns="">he said</em> her writings were inspired by the Devil. These circumstances show how commonly delusion, blasphemy, and madness are to be found in this country, and may lessen our wonder at the phrensy of Joanna and her followers. Her own career began humbly, with prophecies concerning the weather, such as the popular English almanacks contain, and threats concerning the fate of Europe and the successes of the French, which were at that time the speculations of every newspaper, and of every ale-house politician. Some of these guesses having chanced to be right, the women of the family in which she then worked at the upholstering business, began to lend ear to her, and she ventured to submit her papers to the judgement of one Mr. Pomeroy, the clergyman whose church she attended in Exeter. He listened to her with timid curiosity, rather wanting courage than credulity to become her disciple; received from her certain sealed prophecies which were at some future time to be opened, when, as it would be seen that they had been accomplished, they would prove the truth of her inspiration; and sanctioned, or seemed to sanction, her design of publishing her call to the world. But in this publication his own name appeared, and that in such a manner as plainly to imply, that if he had not encouraged her to print, he had not endeavoured to prevent her from so doing. His eyes were immediately opened to his own imprudence, whatever they may have been to the nature of his call, and he obtained her consent to insert an advertisement in the newspaper with her signature, stating that he had said it was the work of the Devil. But here the parties are at issue: as the advertisement was worded, it signifies that Mr. Pomeroy always said her calling was from the Devil; on the other hand, Joanna and her witnesses protest that what she had signed was merely an acknowledgment that Mr. Pomeroy had said, after her book was printed, the Devil had instigated her to print his name in it. This would not be worthy of mention, if it were not for the very extraordinary situation into which this gentleman has brought himself. Wishing to be clear of the connection in which he had so unluckily engaged, he burnt the sealed papers which had been intrusted to his care. From that time all the Joannians, who are now no inconsiderable number, regard him as the arch-apostate. He is the Jehoiakim who burnt Jeremiah&#8217;s roll of prophecies,<a href="#24">&#160;[24]</a><a name="24back">&#160;</a> he is their Judas Iscariot, a second Lucifer, son of the Morning. They call upon him to produce these prophecies, which she boldly asserts, and they implicitly believe, have all been fulfilled, and therefore would convince the world of the truth of her mission. In vain does Mr. Pomeroy answer that he has burnt these unhappy papers:&#8212;in an unhappy hour for himself did he burn them! Day after day long letters are dispatched to him, sometimes from Joanna herself, sometimes from her brother, sometimes from one of her four-and-twenty elders, filled with exhortation, invective, texts of scripture, and denunciations of the Law in this world and the Devil in the next; and these letters the prophetess prints, for this very sufficient reason&#8212;that all her believers purchase them. Mr. Pomeroy sometimes treats them with contempt, at other times he appeals to their compassion, and beseeches them, if they have any bowels of Christian charity, to have compassion on him and let him rest, and no longer add to the inconceivable and irreparable injuries which they have already occasioned him. If he is silent, no matter, on they go, printing copies of all which they write, and when he is worried into replying, his answers also serve to swell Joanna&#8217;s books. In this manner is this poor man, because he has recovered his senses, persecuted by a crazy prophetess, and her four-and-twenty crazy elders, who seem determined not to desist, till, one way or other, they have made him as ripe for Bedlam as they are themselves.</p><p class=""><strong>6</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The books which she sends into the world are written partly in prose, partly in rhyme, all the verse and the greater part of the prose being delivered in the character of the Almighty! It is not possible to convey any adequate idea of this unparalleled and unimaginable nonsense by any other means than literal transcript. Her hand-writing was illegibly bad, so that at last she found it convenient to receive orders to throw away the pen and deliver her oracles orally; and the words flow from her faster than her scribes can write them down. This may be well believed, for they are mere words and nothing else: a rhapsody of texts, vulgar dreams and vulgar interpretations, vulgar types and vulgar applications;&#8212;the vilest string of words in the vilest doggerel verse, which has no other connection than what the vilest rhymes have suggested, she vents, and her followers receive, as the dictates of immediate inspiration. A herd, however, was ready to devour this garbage as the bread of life. Credulity and Vanity are foul feeders.</p><p class=""><strong>7</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The clergy in her own neighbourhood were invited by her, by private letters, to examine her claims, but they treated her invitation with contempt: the bishop also did not choose to interfere;&#8212;of what avail, indeed, would it have been to have examined her, when they had no power to silence her blasphemies! She found believers at a distance. Seven men came from different parts of the country to examine&#8212;that is&#8212;to believe in her; these were her seven stars; and when at another time seven more arrived upon the same wise errand, she observed, in allusion to one of those vulgar sayings from which all her allusions are drawn, that her seven stars were come to fourteen. Among these early believers were three clergymen, one of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble family. It is not unlikely that the woman at first suspected the state of her own intellects: her letters appear to indicate this; they express a humble submission to wiser judgments than her own; and could she have breathed the first thoughts of delusion into the ear of some pious confessor, it is more than probable that she would have soon acknowledged her error at his feet, and the phrensy which has now infected thousands would have been cut off on its first appearance. But when she found that persons into whose society nothing else could ever have elevated her, listened to her with reverence, believed all her ravings, and supplied her with means and money to spread them abroad, it is not to be wondered at if she went on more boldly;&#8212;the gainfulness of the trade soon silencing all doubts of the truth of her inspiration.</p><p class=""><strong>8</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Some of her foremost adherents were veterans in credulity: they had been initiated in the mysteries of animal magnetism, had received spiritual circumcision from Brothers, and were thus doubly qualified for the part they were to act in this new drama of delusion. To accommodate them, Joanna confirmed the authenticity of this last fanatic&#8217;s mission, and acknowledged him as King of the Hebrews,&#8212;but she dropt his whole mythology. Her heresy in its main part is not new. The opinion that redemption extended to men only and not to women, had been held by a Norman in the sixteenth century, as well as by the fair English heretic already mentioned. This man, in a book called <span xmlns="" class="titlem">Virgo Veneta</span>, maintained that a female Redeemer was necessary for the daughters of Eve, and announced an old woman of Venice of his acquaintance as the Saviour of her sex.<a href="#25">&#160;[25]</a><a name="25back">&#160;</a> Bordonius, a century ago, broached even a worse heresy. In a work upon miracles, printed at Parma, he taught that women did not participate in the atonement, because they were of a different species from man, and were incapable of eternal life.<a href="#26">&#160;[26]</a><a name="26back">&#160;</a> Joanna and her followers are too ignorant to be acquainted with these her prototypes in blasphemy, and the whole merit of originality in her system must be allowed her, as indeed she has exceeded her forerunners in the audacity of her pretensions. She boldly asserts that she is the Woman in the Revelation, who has the Moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; the twelve stars being her twelve Apostles, who with the second dozen of believers make up her four-and-twenty Elders. In her visitation it was told her, that the angels rejoiced at her birth, because she was born to deliver both men and angels from the insults of the Devil. Let it be lawful for me to repeat these blasphemies, holding them up to merited abhorrence. The scheme of redemption, she says, is completed in her, and without her would be imperfect; by woman came the fall of man, by woman must come his redemption; woman plucked the evil fruit, and woman must pluck the good fruit; if the Tree of Knowledge was violated by Eve, the Tree of Life is reserved for Joanna. Eve was a bone from Adam, she is a bone from Christ the second Adam. She is the Bride, the promised seed who is to bruise the Serpent&#8217;s head; she it is who claims the promise made at the creation, that woman should be the helpmate of man, and by her the Creator fulfils that promise, and acquits himself of the charge of having given to man the woman in vain. The evening star was placed in the firmament to be her type. While she arrogates so much to herself, she is proportionately liberal to her followers; they have been appointed to the four-and-twenty elderships: and to one of them, when he died, a higher character was more blasphemously attributed: she assured his relations that he was gone to plead the promises before the Lord; that to him was to be given the key of the bottomless pit, and that the time was at hand when he should be seen descending in the air,&#8212;for they knew not the meaning of our Saviour&#8217;s words when he said, &#8216;Ye shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds, in power and great glory!&#8217;<a href="#27">&#160;[27]</a><a name="27back">&#160;</a></p><p class=""><strong>9</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The immediate object of her call is to destroy the Devil: of this the Devil was aware, and that it might not be said he had had foul play, a regular dispute of seven days was agreed on between him and Joanna, in which she was to be alone, and he to bring with him as many of the Powers of Darkness as he pleased: but he was not to appear visibly; for, as he did not choose to make his appearance on a former occasion when some of her elders went to give him the meeting, but had disappointed them, he was not to be permitted to manifest himself bodily now. The conditions were, that if she held out with argument against him for seven days, the Woman should be freed and he fall; but if she yielded, Satan&#8217;s kingdom was to stand, and a second fall of the human race would be the consequence. Accordingly, she went alone into a solitary house for this conference. Joanna was her own secretary upon this occasion, and the process-verbal of the conference has been printed, as literally taken down; for she was ordered to set down all his blasphemies, and show to the world what the language of Hell is. It is by no means a polite language;&#8212;indeed the proficiency which Satan displays in the vulgar tongue is surprising.</p><p class=""><strong>10</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;Of all Joanna&#8217;s books this is the most curious.<a href="#28">&#160;[28]</a><a name="28back">&#160;</a> Satan brought a friend with him, and they made up a story for themselves which has some ingenuity. &#8216;It is written,&#8217; said they, &#8216;Be still, and know that I am God;&#8217;<a href="#29">&#160;[29]</a><a name="29back">&#160;</a> this still worship did not suit Satan; he was a lively cheerful spirit, full of mirth and gaiety, which the Lord could not bear, and therefore cast him out of Heaven. This, according to Apollyon&#8217;s<a href="#30">&#160;[30]</a><a name="30back">&#160;</a> account of Heaven, could have been no great evil. &#8216;Thou knowest,&#8217; he says, &#8216;it is written of God, he is a consuming fire, and who can dwell in everlasting burnings? Our backs are not brass nor our sinews iron, to dwell with God in Heaven.&#8217;<a href="#31">&#160;[31]</a><a name="31back">&#160;</a> The Heaven therefore which men mistakenly desire, is in its nature the very Hell of which they are so much afraid; and it is sufficient proof of the truth of all this, that the Devil invites them to make themselves happy and lead a gay life, agreeably to his own cheerful disposition, whereas religion enjoins self-denial, penitence, and all things which are contrary to our natural inclinations. Satan accounted to Joanna for her inspiration by this solution: An evil spirit had loved her from her youth up, he found there was no other access to her heart than by means of religion; and, being himself able to foresee future events, imparted this knowledge to her in the character of a good spirit. This spirit, he said, was one which she had been well acquainted with; it was that of one Mr. Follart, who had told her if she would not have him for a husband he should die for her sake, and accordingly he had died. But this deception had now been carried so far that Satan was angry, and threatened, unless she broke her seals and destroyed her writings, he would tear her in pieces. The conference terminated like most theological disputes. Both parties grew warm. Apollyon interfered, and endeavoured to accommodate matters, but without effect, and Joanna talked Satan out of all patience. She gave him, as he truly complained, ten words for one, and allowed him no time to speak. All men,he said, were tired of her tongue already, and now she had tired the Devil. This was not unreasonable; but he proceeded to abuse the whole sex, which would have been ungracious in any one, and in him was ungrateful. He said no man could tame a woman&#8217;s tongue&#8212;the sands of an hour-glass did not run faster&#8212;it was better to dispute with a thousand men than one woman. After this dispute she fasted forty days; but this fast, which is regarded by her believers as so miraculous, was merely a Catholic Lent, in which she abstained from fish as well as flesh.</p><p class=""><strong>11</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;The Moon which is under her feet in the Revelation,<a href="#32">&#160;[32]</a><a name="32back">&#160;</a> typifies the Devil: for the moon, it seems, having power to give light by night but not by day, is Satan&#8217;s kingdom, and his dwelling-place; he, I conclude, being the very person commonly called the Man in the Moon, a conjecture of my own, which, you must allow, is strongly confirmed by his horns. Once, when the Lord made her the same promise as Herod had done to Herodias, she requested that Satan might be cut off from the face of the earth as John the Baptist had been. This petition she was instructed to write, and seal it with three seals, and carry it to the altar when she received the sacrament! and a promise was returned that it should be granted. Her dreams are usually of the Devil. Once she saw him like a pig with his mouth tied, at another time skinned his face with her nails after a fierce battle; once she bit off his fingers, and thought the blood sweet,&#8212;and once she dreamt she had fairly killed him. But neither has the promise of his destruction been as yet fulfilled, nor the dream accomplished.</p><p class=""><strong>12</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;This phrensy would have been speedily cured in our country; bread and water, a solitary cell, and a little wholesome discipline are specifics in such cases. Mark the difference in England. No bishop interferes; she therefore boldly asserts that she has the full consent of the bishops to declare that her call is from God, because, having been called upon to disprove it, they keep silent. She who was used to earn her daily bread by daily labour, is now taken into the houses of her wealthy believers, regarded as the most blessed among women, carried from one part of England to another, and treated every where with reverence little less than idolatry. Meantime dictating books as fast her scribes can write them down, she publishes them as fast as they are written, and the Joannians buy them as fast as they are published. Nor is this her only trade. The seals in the Revelation furnished her with a happy hint. She calls upon all persons &#8216;to sign their names for Christ&#8217;s glorious and peaceable kingdom to be established and to come upon earth, and his will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven, and for Satan&#8217;s kingdom to be destroyed, which is the prayer and desire of Joanna Southcott&#8217;. They who sign this are to be sealed. Now if this temporal sealing, which is mentioned by St. John in the Revelation, had been understood before this time, men would have begun sealing themselves without the visitation of the Spirit; and if she had not understood it and explained it now, it would have been more fatal for herself and for all mankind than the fall of Eve was. The mystery of sealing is this: whosoever signs his name receives a sealed letter containing these words: <em xmlns="">The Sealed of the Lord, the Elect, Precious, Man&#8217;s Redemption, to inherit the Tree of Life, to be made Heirs of God, and Joint-heirs with Jesus Christ.</em> Signed <em xmlns="">Joanna Southcott.</em> I know not what the price of this initiation is; but she boasts of having sealed above eight thousand persons, so that the trade is a thriving one.</p><p class=""><strong>13</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;And these things are believed in England! in England, where Catholic Christians are so heartily despised for superstition; in England, where the people think themselves so highly enlightened,&#8212;in this country of reason and philosophy and free inquiry! It is curious to observe how this age in which we live is denominated by every writer just as its temper accords with his own views: with the infidel, it is the Age of Reason; with the Churchman, the Age of Infidelity; with the Chemist, the Age of Philosophy; with Rulers, the Age of Anarchy; with the People, the Age of Oppression, every one beholding the prospect through a coloured glass, and giving it sunshine or shade, frost or verdure, according to his own fancy, none looking round him and seeing it fairly as it is. Yet surely if we consider the ignorance of the great majority of the English, the want of anchorage for their faith, the want of able directors for their souls, the rapidity with which novelties of any kind are circulated throughout the country, the eagerness with which the credulous listen to every new blasphemy, the contemptuous indifference of the clergy to any blasphemy provided it does not immediately threaten themselves, the unlimited toleration shown to Jews, Gentiles, and Heretics of every description, above all if we remember that every person has the power of comparing these delusive books with the Bible, of which they are instructed to consider themselves competent expounders,&#8212;we must acknowledge that there never was any age or any country so favourable to the success of imposture and the growth of superstition, as this very age and this very England.</p><p class=""><strong>14</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;I have to add concerning Joanna, that she prophesies how she and her believers are to be tried in the ensuing year, and that this awful trial will be only second to that of our blessed Lord at Pilate&#8217;s bar! What new juggle is in preparation I pretend not to divine. Thus much is certain, that her believers are proof against conviction, and you will agree with me in thinking no further trial necessary to prove that she and her abettors ought either to be punished as impostors, or silenced as lunatics.*</p><p class="">*[Southey&#8217;s note:] The Translator has been curious enough to inquire the event of this trial, which may be related in few words. None but her believers assembled; they provided an attorney to give their proceedings some of the ceremonials of legality, examined witnesses to prove the good character of the prophetess, signed a profession of belief in her,&#8212;and afterwards published an account of all this folly under the title of <span xmlns="" class="titlem">The Trial of Joanna Southcott</span>. Joanna had predicted that at this trial she was to be cast into a trance; not thinking this convenient when the time appointed came, she had a revelation to say, that if any of her judges required it, the Lord would still entrance her, but that it would certainly be her death: and thus throwing herself upon the mercy of her own accomplices, it will easily be guessed that none among them insisted upon the proof. One of the company inquired whether Satan knew he was cast by this trial; as, in that case, it was to be presumed he would rage against her and her friends with the utmost of his fury. This gentleman would have been a good subject for a night-mare.</p><p class=""><strong>15</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;D. Manuel might well say that nothing but literal transcript could convey an idea of this woman&#8217;s vulgarity and nonsense; witness the passages which he has selected,</p><div class="blockquote"><div class="stanza"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">So, learned men, no more contend,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">Till you have seen all clear,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">The Woman clothed with the Sun</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">A wonder to you here.</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">So, in amaze, you all may gaze,</div></td><td width="15%">5</td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">As Adam did at first,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">To see the bone to him unknown,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">The woman there was placed.</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">The woe you see, she brought on he,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">And the first woe for man;&#8212;</div></td><td width="15%">10</td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">But how shall Satan now get free,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">She casts her woe on man.&#8212;</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">Though &#8217;twas not she, I must tell ye,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">Did cast the woe on man;</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">The serpent was condemned by she,</div></td><td width="15%">15</td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent3">And there her woe must come.<a href="#33">&#160;[33]</a><a name="33back">&#160;</a></div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr></table></div><br xmlns=""/></div>
It is speaking within compass to say, that she has sent into the world above twenty thousand of such verses as these, as the dictates of the Spirit!
<p class=""><strong>16</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; What follows is in the words of one of her chosen disciples; &#8216;On Monday morning Joanna received a letter from Exeter, which informed her she would have Mr. Jones&#8217;s answer about Mr. Pomeroy in the evening; and her fears for him flung her into a violent agitation; every nerve in her shook, and she fell sick as though she would have fainted away. She could not keep in her bed, but laid herself on the floor in agonies, and said she knew not whether to pity or condemn him; but at last got up in a rage against the Devil, and said her revenge would be sweet to see the Devil chained down, and she should like, with a sharp sword, to cut him in pieces. She then got into bed, exclaiming against the clergy, and asked for a glass of wine; but she brought it up immediately. Soon after the bason was set upon the bed, she took it up and dashed it violently across the room, and broke it to pieces. After that she had some lamb brought up for her dinner; she tried to swallow a mouthful but could not, but spit it into another bason, and said she could neither swallow the wine nor the lamb, but found the fury of the Lord break in upon her, and she dashed the second bason on the floor. She then said she felt herself happier and easier since she had broken both the basons; for so would the Lord, in his anger, break the clergy.&#8217;</p><p class=""><strong>17</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;This is from a book with the following curious title:</p><div class="blockquote">MR. JOSEPH SOUTHCOTT, THE BROTHER OF JOANNA SOUTHCOTT, WILL NOW COME FORWARD AS DINAH&#8217;S BRETHREN DID, THAT THEY SHALL NOT DEAL WITH HIS SISTER AS THEY WOULD WITH A HARLOT, FOR SO THEY ARE NOW DEALING WITH HER. AND HE WILL PROVE TO THE WORLD WHERE THE ADULTERY IS COMMITTED, BY MEN WHO ARE UNCIRCUMCISED IN HEART AND LIFE: AND NOW HE WILL EXPEND ALL THAT HE HAS IN THE WORLD, IF REQUIRED, IN THE HONEST DEFENCE OF HER CHARACTER, TILL HE HAS SLAIN THE UNCIRCUMCISED PHILISTINES, AND ENTIRELY FREED HIS SISTER FROM THE REPROACHES OF THEIR ADULTERY.<a href="#34">&#160;[34]</a><a name="34back">&#160;</a></div><p class=""><strong>18</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;A few flowers of infernal eloquence should be added from The Dispute with the Powers of Darkness. Satan says to her, &#8216;Thou infamous B---ch! thou hast been flattering God that he may stand thy friend. Such low cunning art I despise.Thou wheening devil! stop thy d-mn d eternal tongue; thou runnest on so fast all the Devils in Hell cannot keep up with thee.&#8212;God hath done something to chuse a b-ch of a woman that will down-argue the Devil, and scarce give him room to speak.&#8217;<a href="#35">&#160;[35]</a><a name="35back">&#160;</a>&#8212;It may truly be said, in Joanna&#8217;s own words, <em xmlns="">&#8216;If the woman is not ashamed of herself the Devil cannot shame her</em>&#8217;.<a href="#36">&#160;[36]</a><a name="36back">&#160;</a></p><p class=""><strong>19</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;If the language of Joanna herself is grovelling in the very mud and mire of baseness and vulgarity, one of her elders has soared into the sublime of frenzy. The passage is long, but deserves insertion, as, perhaps, there does not exist elsewhere so complete a specimen of a prophet rampant. The gentleman begins in some plain prose reflections upon the Fall, and goes on addressing the Devil, till he has worked himself up, and begins thus to rave in rhythm.</p><div class="blockquote">&#8216;&#8212;Then where&#8217;s thy ground on earth? receive thy doom, the pit, there twist in flames, and there thy like deceive!&#8212;Then Cain receive thy doom from Abel&#8217;s blood. Then where is Pharoah and his host? Judge then, need Moses fear! Where is the Lion fallen! and the pit has oped its mouth,&#8212;the covering&#8217;s dropt; the Lamb has nought to fear&#8212;then roar no more to shake the earth and sea. Where now&#8217;s the eagle and vultur&#8217;d host&#8212;thy wings are pluck&#8217;d on earth, she stands defenceless, the fatal net beneath.&#8212;The Dove now has protection; she ranges earth and sea, and soars aloft unhurt, unfeared, to carry peace to all.&#8212;The Ark is opened now, she brings the olive branch,&#8212;the floods are past, where&#8217;s now the giant race?&#8212;Who pressed on Lot? &#8217;Twas thee the proud oppressor! Where art thou now?&#8212;Where is thy pride and city? Knowest thou the words, come out! come out! let Sodom feel its doom. Where now is Lot? At Zoar safe! Where is his wife? Is she not salt all?&#8212;The writing&#8217;s on the wall.&#8212;Thou lewdly revellest with the bowls of God.&#8212;Thy kingdoms past away&#8212;Now see my Daniel rise&#8212;Who cast him in his den?&#8212;&#8217;Twas thee&#8212;Thou rolledst the stone, thou sealedst his doom&#8212;the roaring Lion thee! Then let the stone return, the seal be broke, and go thou in his stead. Where is the image gold and Bel? Where is proud Babel&#8217;s builder? Confusion is thy name: confusion is thy doom! Let Bel asunder burst! the pitch, and tar, and walls of wood expose thy make, deceit, and craft,&#8212;and pass in flames away. The God of Daniel stands&#8212;Daniel rise up! Six days are past&#8212;the seventh now is here&#8212;seven times refined and purified in innocency come.&#8212;The emerald, unhurt in fire, displays great Judah&#8217;s son.&#8212;Let Urim&#8217;s light and Thummim shine in bright perfection&#8217;s day. The twelve men stand upon the plate&#8212;the fourth denotes great Judah&#8217;s son, who is the rightful heir. The stones denote all Jacob&#8217;s sons, their light and quality&#8212;they shine as stars in Jesus&#8217; crown upon the Woman&#8217;s head.&#8212;The Sun unveil&#8217;d shall now arise&#8212;The Moon from scarlet shall emerge&#8212;The stars from darkness now appear to light the midnight hour&#8212;Then where art thou, O Satan! Where are thy heads, and horns, and dragon&#8217;s tail, which slew and hurt the living stars! Where are thy rays of fire&#8212;thy watery floods&#8212;behold they are past away&#8212;The woman&#8217;s fears of thee are o&#8217;er&#8212;the wilderness receives her child, whose iron rod now feel. The pit has oped its mouth&#8212;thou art now cast, shut up and sealed&#8212;the saints now judge the earth. The Omnipotent is here in power and spirit in the word&#8212;The sword, white horse, and King of Kings has drawn the flailing sword! Rejoice, ye saints, rejoice! The Beast and Dragon, mountain, tree, no more shall hurt, devour, becloud, the Saint, the gold and vine. The gold and gems appear&#8212;The mighty earthquake now displays the hidden son of God. The rod and smitten rock gush forth, and smite and slay, and make alive, now saves and now destroys. The cloud and glory, Jonah&#8217;s sign, display the virtues of the word, the light and darkness shews. The Gospel brings the light, and life, and death&#8212;and death as men obey or mock. The six denotes the suffering time to show the Son of Man&#8212;The sign within the Sun&#8212;The fowls now feast on thee! Then where&#8217;s thy former reign? Beneath the rod of Moses see thy fall from Heaven&#8217;s height. Son of the Morning, Lucifer, no more oppress&#8212;be thou a fallen star! Great Gog and Agag, where are ye? The walls of Jericho art thou; fall flat! Joshua&#8217;s ram&#8217;s horns, the seven and twelve, pass Jordan&#8217;s stream.&#8212;Where is the Lion, Bear, Goliath huge, but in the center thee. David appears, a stripling youth, now tears and slays, and slings the stone, and smites thy dragon&#8217;s head. Now see great David&#8217;s reign&#8212;The temple&#8217;s stones, unhewed by man in those days, unite, the King of Peace amidst the seven in oil unite, and in a stone with seven eyes appears, The stately fabric now is laid, founded and topped with gems of every hue. The ark of Moses now is built&#8212;The words, the laws, the sceptre, all unite, and Aaron&#8217;s budded rod&#8212;He now is chosen; eat the bread, prepare the sacrifice. John eats the book, which sweet and bitter is&#8212;He prophecies; the temple metes, and stands before the Lamb. The temple measures, and anoints, and Moses&#8217; tabernacle. The witnesses, Matthew and John, as olive trees appear.&#8212;The broken stones of Moses now uplift, renewed in books arise from death.&#8212;The Lord&#8217;s anointed reigns&#8212;The rods, or laws, of Ephraim ten, unite is one and hold by Judah&#8217;s skirt&#8212;The Son of Man o&#8217;er Israel reigns&#8212;The dry bones now arise&#8212;Here ends thy earthly reign&#8212;The bond of union now is come&#8212;The marriage ring appears&#8212;The Bride is come&#8212;The Bridegroom now receives the marriage seal&#8212;The Law and Gospel now unite&#8212;The Moon and Sun appear&#8212;Caleb and Joshua pass the stream in triumph to restore. Where now thou Canaanite art thou? Where all thy maddened crew?
<div class="stanza"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">&#8216;Hittites, be gone! no more appear to hurt or to annoy;</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">Now Israel&#8217;s sons in peace succeed, and Canaan&#8217;s land enjoy.</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">Behold from Edom I appear with garments dipt in blood;</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">My sons are freed and saved, and wash&#8217;d amidst the purple flood.</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">The law, of moon, imperfect was to save&#8212;</div></td><td width="15%">5</td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">But now the star points dead men to the grave.</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr></table></div><br xmlns=""/>
&#8216;Mercy benign appears&#8212;The Gospel Sun embraces all&#8212;The Spirit and the Bride invite, and offer wine and milk&#8212;but not to mockers here. Infinity of love and grace! Gentiles and Jews unite, no more from love to part. Six days are past&#8212;Peter, and James, and John, behold my glory in my word.
<div class="stanza"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">&#8216;The Law and Prophets now are seen with Jesus&#8217; word to shine,</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr><tr><td width="85%"><div class="indent2">But what hast thou, thou serpent here, to do with love benign?</div></td><td width="15%"> </td></tr></table></div><br xmlns=""/>
&#8216;Tremble and flee, &#8217;tis done. The seals are burst&#8212;the vials pour and end thy destiny.</div>
&#8216;These are a small part of the thoughts of the judgments of God pronounced on Satan,&#8217; concludes the writer, who is a gentleman of vast respectability.
<p class=""><strong>20</strong>.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;One of her books has the title printed on the last page, because it was ordered that the book should contain neither more nor less than forty-eight pages. Another has a seal in the middle of it bearing the letters J. C.&#8212;the J., it is said, being meant for Jesus and Joanna!!</p></div>
</div>
<div class="notes">
<div class="noteHeading">
<h3>Notes</h3>
</div>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="1">[1]</a> Abb&#233; Augustin Barruel (1741-1820), a French Jesuit who had fled France after the revolution and was living in Britain, was in 1797 the author of <span class="titlem">M&#233;moires pour server &#224; l&#8217;Histoire du Jacobinisme</span>, translated as <span class="titlem">Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism</span>. In this highly popular conspiracy theory, he attributed the revolution to a series of societies holding mystical beliefs and observing secret rituals&#8212;the <em>Illuminati</em>&#8212;and dedicated to destroying the Catholic Church and the states that supported it. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#1back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="2">[2]</a> The novels of Madelaine de Scud&#233;ry (1607-1701) featured unlikely plots, in which the heroines suffered multiple abductions at the hands of Oriental despots. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#2back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="3">[3]</a> The Swedish mystical author Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who claimed, after a spiritual awakening in 1758, to be able to visit heaven and hell and communicate with spirits, died in London. There, a number of Protestant dissenters and Anglican clergymen proved receptive to his books and in May 1787 the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church was established and began to send missionaries across the country; by April 1789, when the first General Conference was held in Eastcheap attended by Bryan&#8217;s fellow engraver William Blake, several churches had been established. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#3back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="4">[4]</a> A converted Jew named Samuel. See John Wright, <span class="titlem">A Revealed Knowledge of Some Things That Will Speedily be Fulfilled in the World</span> (London, 1794), p. 4. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#4back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="5">[5]</a> Southey himself met Bryan, probably in Bath at the house of one of Brothers&#8217; supporters&#8212;either Samuel Whitchurch, ironmonger, or James Crease, picture framer and restorer, to whose pamphlets hailing Brothers as a prophet he alluded in a letter of 9 May 1795 (<span class="titlem">Romantic Circles</span>, <span class="titlem">Collected Letters of Robert Southey</span>, gen. ed. Lynda Pratt, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer, <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="link_ref" href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/southey_letters/Part_One/HTML/letterEEd.26.126.html" title="Vol. I, Letter 126">Vol. I, Letter 126</a>). Whitchurch, a poet as well as an ironmonger, paid tribute to Southey&#8217;s poem <span class="titlem">Joan of Arc</span> (1795) in 'Lines on the Crucifixion' in his collection <span class="titlem">Hispaniola</span> (Bath, 1804). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#5back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="6">[6]</a> The history of the Avignon Society remains disputed by scholars: most now agree that it was established in 1786 by Don Antoine Joseph Pernety (1716-96) a former Benedictine monk influenced both by Freemasonry and by Swedenborg, whose writings he translated into French while working as the librarian to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, in Berlin. In 1763-64 Pernety had been part of the scientific voyage into the South Atlantic commanded by Louis Antoine de Bougainville. On his return he published <span class="titlem">Journal historique d&#8217;un voyage fait aux &#238;les Malouines en 1763 et 1764 pour les reconno&#238;tre et y former un &#233;tablissement et de deux voyages au d&#233;troit de Magellan avec une relation sur les Patagons</span> (1769). Pernety&#8217;s Avingon scheme was aided by Count Thaddeus Leszczy Grabianka (1740-1807), another Swedenborgian whom he met in Berlin. Following a visit to English Swedenborgians, Grabianka joined Pernety in founding the Soci&#233;t&#233; des Illumin&#233;s d&#8217;Avignon, a group whose spiritual practices took elements from freemasonry, alchemy, mesmerism, Catholic mysticism and Swedenborgianism. The Society was dispersed in the early 1790s during the upheavals of the Revolution. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#6back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="7">[7]</a> According to J. F. C. Harrison, <span class="titlem">The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850</span> (Piscataway, NJ, 1979), p. 243, probably Thomas Spence Duch&#233; (1763-90), an artist who visited the Avignon society, and son of the preacher, former American revolutionary and Swedenborgian Jacob Duch&#233; (1737-98). Duch&#233;&#8217;s Swedeborgian meeting had been visited by Grabianka in 1785-86. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#7back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="8">[8]</a> Brothers&#8217; supporter, the Orientalist Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751-1830), noticed similarities between Brothers&#8217; doctrine of transmigration and the Hindu Trimourtee, or &#8216;triad of Energies&#8217;, Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. See Halhed, <span class="titlem">Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of R. Brothers and of his Mission to Recall the Jews</span>, 2nd edn (London, 1795), p. 10. A fragment by Xenophanes suggests that the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570-c. 495 BC) believed in the transmigration of the soul into different bodies. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#8back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="9">[9]</a> The Barules believed that the Son of God had only a phantom body and that souls were created before the world and all existed at the same time. The Flagellants, a fourteenth century middle-European sect, believed that human souls transmigrated into animals. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#9back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="10">[10]</a> Bryan, as he himself recorded in his <span class="titlem">A Testimony of the Spirit of Truth concerning Richard Brothers ... in an address to the people of Israel, &amp;c., to the gentiles called Christians, and all other gentiles. With some account of the manner of the Lord&#8217;s gracious dealing with his servant W. Bryan</span> (London, 1795). Bryan also told Southey personally of his plan. See Southey&#8217;s <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="link_ref" href="/editions/southey_prophecy/HTML/Prophets.html" title="letter of 7 July 1807 to John May">letter of 7 July 1807 to John May</a><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#10back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="11">[11]</a> In the Book of Judges 3: 12-28 the Israelite Ehud, on the pretext of taking the annual tribute to the Moabite King Eglon, stabbed him in the stomach with a short sword. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#11back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="12">[12]</a> Terms for marketable purchases of instalments of stock and government securities. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#12back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="13">[13]</a> William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), Prime Minister 1783-1801. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#13back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="14">[14]</a> William Sharp the engraver (1747-1824), already interested in Mesmerism and Swedenborgianism, became a follower of Brothers and, in 1795, engraved Brothers&#8217; image above the title &#8216;Richard Brothers Prince of the Hebrews&#8217;. After Brothers&#8217; confinement, Sharp became a follower, and subsequently one of the elders, of Southcott. He published <span class="titlem">An Answer to the World, for putting in print a book in 1804, called, Copies and parts of Copies of Letters and Communications, written from Joanna Southcott</span> (London, 1806). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#14back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="15">[15]</a> The Orientalist scholar and M.P. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751-1830) astonished the educated classes by declaring himself a believer in the prophetic mission of Brothers. See Halhed, <span class="titlem">Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of R. Brothers and of his Mission to Recall the Jews</span>, 2nd edn (London, 1795). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#15back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="16">[16]</a> Halhed noticed similarities between Brothers&#8217; doctrine of transmigration and the Hindu Trimourtee, or &#8216;triad of Energies&#8217;, Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. See Halhed, <span class="titlem">Testimony</span>, p. 10. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#16back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="17">[17]</a> Halhed, <span class="titlem">Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of R. Brothers and of his Mission to Recall the Jews</span>, 2nd edn (London, 1795). See the prophecy of a coming apocalypse in Revelation 5: 5, &#8216;Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof&#8217;. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#17back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="18">[18]</a> Brothers was arrested on 4 March 1795 and examined by the Privy Council. On 27 March, he was declared insane and confined as a criminal lunatic. From 4 May, he was held in Fisher House, Islington, a private asylum. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#18back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="19">[19]</a> Halhed published the text of his Commons speech as <span class="titlem">Mr. Halhed&#8217;s Speech in the House of Commons (March 31st 1795; being a motion for the printing and distributing of Mr. Brother&#8217;s Prophecys, etc. for the use of the Members;) his Reply to Dr. Horne&#8217;s Sound Argument and Common Sense; with cursory observations on the Age of Credulity, and his Calculation on the Millennium</span> (London, 1795). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#19back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="20">[20]</a> Engravings of this kind featured in Brothers&#8217; <span class="titlem">A Description of Jerusalem: its houses and streets ... with the Garden of Eden in the centre as laid down in the last chapters of Ezekiel. Also the first chapter of Genesis verified</span> (London, 1801). Further engravings appeared in the work printed for Brothers&#8217; supporter John Finleyson: <span class="titlem">The New Covenant between God and His People; or, the Hebrew constitution and charter; with the statutes and ordinances, the laws and regulations, and commands and covenants</span> (London, 1830). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#20back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="21">[21]</a> In 1802 the Reverends Thomas P. Foley, of Old Swinford, Worcestershire, Thomas Webster of St. George&#8217;s the Borough, London, and Stanhope Bruce, of Inglesham, Gloucestershire, having interviewed Southcott, declared their belief in her prophetic mission. In 1805 Foley published <span class="titlem">The Answer of the Rev. Thomas P. Foley, to the World, Who Hath Blamed His Faith in Believing It Was a Command from the Lord to Put in Print Such Parable, As He Printed Last Year at Stourbridge, under the Ttitle &#8216;What Manner of Communications are These?&#8217;</span> (Oldswinford, 1805). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#21back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="22">[22]</a> The Saracen sorceress who enthralled the Christian hero in Tarquato Tasso&#8217;s poem <span class="titlem">Gerusalemme Liberata</span> (1580). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#22back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="23">[23]</a> Saint Epiphanius (ca. 310/320-403), Bishop of Salamis, compiled a huge compendium of heresies. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#23back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="24">[24]</a> Jeremiah 36: 1-32. Jehoiakim (c. 635-597 BC), King of Judah, had the manuscript of one of Jeremiah&#8217;s prophecies burned, as it criticised his rule. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#24back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="25">[25]</a> Southey refers to William Postellus, whose identification of Mother Johanna of Venice as the female redeemer led to his dismissal by the Jesuits and persecution by the Inquisition. Fleeing Italy for France, he published several heterodox works under the protection of Charles IX, and died in a monastery there in 1581. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#25back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="26">[26]</a> The Franciscan friar Francesco Bordoni da Parma (1594-1671), author of numerous works of theology, ecclesiastical history and law. Bordoni argued for women&#8217;s spiritual inferiority to men in <span class="titlem">Opus posthumum, de recenti prim&#242; in lucem proditur, quod consistit in duas appendices ad Manuale consultorum in causis Sancti Officii contr&#224; haereticam pravitatem occurrentibus ... in prima diffus&#232; ostenditur quasi omnem excogitabilem blasphemiam ... In secunda ver&#242; explicantur essentia, qualitates, ac diversitatum genus omnium sortilegiorum...Ad cujus calcem subsequitur nova reimpressio Tractatus de legatis ejusdem auctoris denu&#242; revisus, ac ... correctus ... industria</span> (Parma, 1703). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#26back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="27">[27]</a> From Matthew 26: 24. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#27back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="28">[28]</a><span class="titlem">A Dispute between the Woman and the Powers of Darkness</span> (London, 1802). <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#28back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="29">[29]</a><span class="titlem">A Dispute</span>, p. 6. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#29back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="30">[30]</a> In Revelation 9:11 Apollyon is the destroyer, &#8216;the angel of the bottomless pit&#8217;. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#30back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="31">[31]</a><span class="titlem">A Dispute</span>, p. 48. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#31back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="32">[32]</a> Revelation 12: 1. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#32back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="33">[33]</a><span class="titlem">A Dispute</span>, p. 66. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#33back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="34">[34]</a> (London, 1804), pp. 30-31. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#34back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="35">[35]</a><span class="titlem">A Dispute</span>, p. 32. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#35back">BACK</a></p>
<p xmlns="" class="note"><a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" name="36">[36]</a><span class="titlem">A Dispute</span>, p. 34. <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="#36back">BACK</a></p>
</div>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/southey_prophecy">Robert Southey and Millenarianism: Documents Concerning the Prophetic Movements of the Romantic Era</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/robert-southey-and-millenarianism-documents-concerning-the-prophetic-movements-of" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert Southey and Millenarianism: Documents Concerning the Prophetic Movements of the Romantic Era</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/leeds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Leeds</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/paris" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Paris</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-continent-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Continent:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/africa" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Africa</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/continent/asia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Asia</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/europe" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Europe</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/palestine" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Palestine</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/italy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Italy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/egypt" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Egypt</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/country/united-kingdom" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">United Kingdom</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/divine-command" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Divine Command</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/organization/new-jerusalem-church" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New Jerusalem Church</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/avignon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Avignon</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-bryan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Bryan</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/joanna-southcott" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Joanna Southcott</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-wright" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Wright</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jesus" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jesus</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/don-manuel-alvarez-espriella" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/robert-southey-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert Southey</a></li></ul></section>Sun, 22 Jul 2012 12:02:22 +0000rc-admin31418 at http://www.rc.umd.eduChapter XVI of Alaric Watts: A Narrative of His Lifehttp://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/oceanides/contexts/watts.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2003-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2003</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table width="640" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr align="left">
<td>
<p><b>Watts, Alaric Alfred. <i>Alaric Watts: A Narrative of His Life</i>. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1884. 1: 178-88.</b><br/></p>
<p align="center"><b>MARIA JANE JEWSBURY.</b></p>
<p align="left">In the foregoing notice of the contents of the first volume of the &#8216;Literary Souvenir,&#8217; I have mentioned amongst the contributions a sketch published under the initials &#8216;M.J.J.&#8217; The name of this lady, Maria Jane Jewsbury, like the names of more than one of the literary personages to whom I may have to refer in this narrative, is little more than an echo in the age to which I am addressing myself, and might, indeed, scarcely be even that if it had not been kept somewhat in mind by the writings of a younger sister. She died in the prime of life, and she produced in quantity but little; but she became, nevertheless, a very distinct, because truly original personality, in the history of the literature of that period, and is remembered as such with respect by those who are familiar with it.</p>
<p align="left">Of her, Wordsworth, in a note to a <a href="/editions/oceanides/contexts/wdsworth.html#liberty">poem</a> addressed to her, published in his collected works, has placed upon record that, apart from other high qualities, in one, quickness in the motions of the mind, she had, within the range of his acquaintance, no equal.</p>
<p align="left">Mrs. Hemans, to whose acquaintance my father introduced her, writing of her after her early death in 1833, speaks of her in words of much tenderness. &#8216;How much deeper power seemed to lie, coiled up as it were, in the recesses of her mind than was ever manifested to the world in her writings! Strange and sad does it seem that only the broken music of such a spirit should have been given to the earth; the full and finished harmony never drawn forth.&#8217;<br/></p>
<p align="left">Miss Landon said of her: &#8216;I never met with any woman who possessed her powers of conversation. If her language had a fault, it was its extreme perfection. It was like reading an eloquent book full of thought and poetry.&#8217;</p>
<p align="left">Such was the person of whose introduction to the public, as a writer, I am now to speak.</p>
<p align="left">In a biographical work entitled &#8216;The Literary Women of England,&#8217; by Jane Williams, there is a careful sketch of the life of Miss Jewsbury, from which I extract the following notice pertinent to this narrative:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&#8216;Mr. Aston, the editor of the <i>Manchester Gazette</i>, being acquainted with her father, had the honour of first printing and publishing a little poem of hers; and being impressed with a high opinion of her talents, he introduced her to Mr. Alaric A. Watts, who, from the latter part of the year 1822, edited the <i>Leeds Intelligencer</i>, and three years afterwards resigned that paper, removed his residence to Manchester, and became editor of the <i>Manchester Courier</i>. Mr. Watts was less than two years older than Miss Jewsbury, and, with generous zeal, gave publicity to her occasional poems, urged the completion of her first book, and found a publisher for it.&#8217;</p>
</blockquote>
<div align="left">
<p>This account, derived, I conclude, either from Mr. Aston or Miss Jewsbury&#8217;s family, for it was seen for the first time by my father in print, epitomizes substantially the actual facts, and leaves little for his biographer to add in detail; but he may perhaps be allowed to tell the story in his own way.</p>
<p>In the course of the year 1823, while keeping a watchful eye upon contemporary verse in the newspapers and periodicals for the collection he was forming of miscellaneous fugitive poetry, subsequently published under the title of the &#8216;Poetical Album,&#8217; his attention was attracted by some verses in the <i>Manchester Gazette</i> of unusual maturity of thought and perfection of form, bearing the initials M.J.J. Having occasion shortly after to visit Manchester, he took the opportunity to inquire of the editor of the <i>Gazette</i>, Mr. Aston, an early friend, who was this mysterious M.J.J. He learnt that she was the eldest daughter of a gentleman, carrying on business as a manufacturer at Manchester, of the name of Jewsbury; that these, with other compositions, as yet unpublished in prose and verse, were written in intervals of leisure from domestic occupations, the death of her mother having devolved upon her, at an early age, the charge of her father&#8217;s household and the care of a young family of six younger brothers and sisters, to whom she was at once mother, nurse, and governess.</p>
<p>This information could not fail to increase my father&#8217;s interest in the young writer; an introduction was arranged, and the favourable opinion already formed of her talent and originality was more than confirmed by her conversation and the perusal of her unpublished MSS. These displayed not only much poetical power and feeling, as he had anticipated, but a vein of humour, observation and instinctive knowledge of human character, the first a rare quality in women&#8217;s writings at that day, for which he was wholly unprepared. He introduced her to his wife, who liked her, and was equally impressed by her freshness of spirit and powers of mind.</p>
<p>It happened at that time, that a quarterly magazine, published by Andrews of New Bond Street, under the title of <i>The Album</i>, had fallen into the editorship of a friend, Robert Sulivan, (best remembered now as a dramatist), a young writer of taste and possessing a peculiarly delicate vein of wit and humour, a man of all men qualified to do justice to the similar qualities of this young writer. An opening was readily made for her, and, in the numbers for January, 1824, and April, 1825, appeared two prose sketches full of humour and nice observation of character, entitled &#8216;Boarding School Reminiscences,&#8217; and &#8216;The Complaint of the Schoolmistress,&#8217; the first of her prose writings ever printed.</p>
<p>Nor did my father&#8217;s good offices rest here. On one of his now frequent visits to London for the purpose of conferring with his publishers respecting the &#8216;Literary Souvenir,&#8217; he took the opportunity of introducing Miss Jewsbury&#8217;s name to the notice of Mr. Robinson, and threw himself into the cause with so much ardour as to succeed in awakening some corresponding enthusiasm in the mind of the worthy publisher, who, as may be judged from his correspondence, was both enterprising and of a generous spirit. The result was that he took back with him to Leeds an agreement from Hurst and Robinson to purchase from the young authoress a work, unseen, and for the most part unwritten, to consist of miscellaneous sketches and essays, for the, to her, magnificent sum of &#163;100.</p>
<p>This work, under the title of &#8216;Phantasmagoria,&#8217; was published in the year 1825, the writer being in her twenty-fifth year. It displays a ready grasp of the limited experiences of a young woman, considerable perception of human nature, and a vein of humour in character and quality greatly in advance of its age, at all events in the writings of women. In this respect it may be affirmed to have preceded its day by at least thirty years. The titles of some of the sketches afford the only idea which the space at disposal enables me to give of this highly promising literary <i>essai</i> . Here are some of them: &#8216;The Age of Books,&#8217; &#8216;Human Sorrow and Human Sympathy,&#8217; &#8216;Religious Novels,&#8217; &#8216;On the Habit of Analyzing One&#8217;s Emotions,&#8217; &#8216;Why is the Spirit of Poetry Anticheerful?&#8217; &#8216;The Comfortable Woman,&#8217; &#8216;First Efforts in Criticism.&#8217;</p>
<p>In the last-mentioned paper, she parodies the Reviewers of that day, weekly and quarterly, with considerable humour, and even ventures on a joke at the expense of Mr. Southey, rather hinting that certain influential reviews, in whatever subject originating, were sometimes apt to land the reader, without any very definite connection of subject, in the Brazils, the Peninsular War, or Church History. To appreciate the audacity of this suggestion, it is necessary to bear in mind that the &#8216;great and good&#8217; Mr. Southey, as it was the fashion with a large section of the community to designate him,&#8212;I am far from insinuating unjustly,&#8212;enjoyed in Tory circles somewhat of the moral pre-eminence over the rest of the world so universally, in the opposite camp, assigned at the present day to Mr. Gladstone, and that to laugh at him involved a daring only to be paralleled by that of Sydney Smith&#8217;s man who had been heard to speak disrespectfully of the Equator. The matter was not mended when Mr. Wordsworth, desirous of serving his young friend, in the innocency of his heart, sent the book to Southey and asked him to review it in the <i>Quarterly</i>! The Laureate, who, like many eminent men, preferred his own jokes to other people&#8217;s, responded to this overture with some austerity; and signified, no doubt truly enough, that, in all the circumstances, the best service he could render to this misguided young person was to leave her wholly unnoticed. Mr. Wordsworth, whose interest in the young lady had possibly not gone so far as to lead him to read her book, unless, perhaps, the dedicatory poem to himself, must have wondered what it all meant.</p>
<p>In 1827, Miss Jewsbury published &#8216;Letters to the Young,&#8217; which went into a second edition in 1829, in which year she collected her poems into a volume which she entitled &#8216;Lays of Leisure Hours.&#8217; Her final and most sustained work, &#8216;The Three Histories,&#8217; which contains a sketch of the character of Mrs. Hemans under the name of Egeria, appeared in 1830. In 1832 she married the Rev. Kew Fletcher, a clergyman of the Church of England, employed in missionary labours in India, where she died of cholera in the following year. There is a <a class="colorbox-node" href="/editions/oceanides/notes/portrait.html?width=500&height=400">portrait</a> of her in the &#8216;Christian Keepsake,&#8217; an annual published in the year 1838.</p>
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<p>The following letter relates to the episode in the literary career of Miss Jewsbury with which this narrative is more immediately concerned:</p>
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<div align="left">
<p align="right">&#8216;13, Brooke Street, Chorlton Road,<br/>
&#8216;Manchester, 6th March, 1824.</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>&#8216;M Y DEAR F RIEND .</p>
<p>&#8216;What shall I say to you for your letter? Pleased, and gratified, and surprised, are all cold and insufficient terms, indeed I cannot find terms that will adequately express my feelings; and you must not, therefore, because I say little, suppose I do not feel much. I am quite sure that your warm and undeserved exertions gratify me more than even the success itself; and whilst, as a child, I rejoice in the prospect of contributing to the comfort of my father; and, as a woman, exult in the prospect of winning a little attention, the feeling of respectful gratitude to yourself forms, just now, my predominant feeling. The results which you communicate surpass my expectations, if, indeed, I had formed any, and ought to satisfy the most sceptical of my friends. I have, I confess, a real horror of second volumes, unless they are good; but perhaps, like many other young ladies, I am turning timid in the wrong place. I will, therefore, undertake to make the work two volumes, and shall not rest till I have finished them,&#8212;and finished them, I hope, to your satisfaction. How often before then shall I wish that Leeds were nearer to Manchester,&#8212;or Manchester to Leeds! When you have leisure, on your return I shall be highly gratified by hearing from you. Will not Mrs. Watts also gratify me by a line? It would give me great pleasure. My father I shall not see till the evening, so that he cannot unite with me in thanks on the present occasion; but, rest assured that you will have made happy one of the kindest and worthiest of men. Ever believe me, with a deep feeling of your kindness,</p>
</div>
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<p>&#8216;Your obliged friend,<br/>
&#8216;M ARIA J ANE J EWSBURY .&#8217;<br/></p>
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</table></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/oceanides/index.html">The Oceanides</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-primary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Primary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="role:AUT"><a href="/person/watts-alaric-alfred">Watts, Alaric Alfred</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/the-oceanides" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Oceanides</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/manchester" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Manchester</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/leeds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Leeds</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/robert-sulivan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert Sulivan</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/alaric-a-watts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alaric A. Watts</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/maria-jane-jewsbury" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Maria Jane Jewsbury</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:33:35 +0000rc-admin17171 at http://www.rc.umd.eduIntroduction to _The Keepsake_ http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/lel/ksintro.htm
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="1998-10-01T00:00:00-04:00">October 1998</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<center>
<h2>Introduction to</h2>
</center>
<center>
<h2><i><a name="The"/>The Keepsake</a><a href="#1"><sup align="1">1</sup></a></i></h2>
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<p><i>In George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871-72), Ned Plymdale, "one of the good matches in Middlemarch, though not one of its leading minds," presents Rosamond Vincy with the latest Keepsake (presumably the 1831 volume):</i></p>
<blockquote>He had brought the last <i>Keepsake</i>, the gorgeous watered-silk publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic verses and capital and sentimental stories as interesting. Rosamond was gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses"--the very thing to please a nice <a name="girl.">girl.</a><a href="#2">2</a></blockquote>
<p>Although Eliot's Victorian portrayal of The Keepsake is disparaging, it rightly locates the book as a symbol of progress and cultural fashion, as well as a token of affection.</p>
<p><i>The Keepsake</i> was an illustrated anthology of poetry and prose sold annually from 1828 to 1857 during the Christmas season as gifts, for middle-class women (<a href="/editions/lel/intro.htm#essay1">see List of Publishers and Editors</a>). Bound in sparkling crimson watered silk with gilt-edged pages, <i>The Keepsake</i> featured elegant, steel-plate engravings of fashionable women, travel scenes, and romantic story pictures. <i>Keepsake</i> literature was sometimes written to accompany the illustrations, but not always. The 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> features contributions from nearly every literary celebrity of the period, such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Moore, Robert Southey, L. E. L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), and Felicia Hemans. Literary historians, if they recognize the importance of literary annuals at all, usually view them as Eliot did: sentimental books unworthy of serious critical attention. Now, we recognize <i>The Keepsake</i> is a vital cultural artifact, improtant to our understanding of nineteenth-century book history, gender relations, and the commodification of literature in the period.</p>
<p>Indeed, <i>Keepsake</i> history is an interesting tale of such paradoxes and appearances. <i>Keepsake</i> publishers were fiscally conservative and serious about their position as moral guardians, yet they challenged the boundaries of propriety by promoting a highly successful commercial product targeted to middle-class female readers, one that competed with poetry volumes and other ostensibly serious literature for an equal share of the literary market. <i>Keepsake</i> proprietor Charles Heath was careful to market his book in advertising and prefaces as an exclusive, handcrafted book of fine literature, but the essential focus on women readers and the means of its production places <i>The Keepsake</i> squarely in the mainstream of nineteenth-century middle- class consumerism, oppositional to exclusivity.</p>
<p>Eliot's portrayal of <i>The Keepsake</i> in <i>Middlemarch</i> demonstrates the success of Heath's marketing plan. The "copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles" were not produced with the old copper methods used in finely crafted eighteenth-century illustrations, but with the latest steel-plate engraving techniques being refined in Heath's factory line of engravers. These appearances enhance Plymdale's feeling that he is giving the perfect gift for a girl. <i>The Keepsake</i> was indeed a beautiful book with the promise of fine literature and romance, and the 1829 volume represents Heath's attempt to collect the largest list of literary celebrities ever contained in one volume. It also provides us with a unique opportunity from our late perspective to consider the nature of literature and books as cultural commodities.</p>
<h3><a name="essay2">Production of <i>The Keepsake</i> for 1829</a></h3>
<p><a name="essay2">Regardless of its veneer of conservatism, <i>The Keepsake</i> used many innovative techniques then being tested in the publishing community. Frederic Mansel Reynolds' 1829 Preface makes claims for "considerably augmented" engravings, "altered" type, and "materially improved" binding and</a> <a name="gilding">gilding</a>.<a href="#3">3</a> Printing improvements are difficult to see; however, C. H. Timperley credits <i>The Keepsake</i>'s London printer Thomas Davison for a special ink process: "By improvements which he made in printing ink, (a secret which he had for a long time the exclusive possession) and other merits, he acquired great celebrity; and few indeed of his competitors, would approach the characters of what <a name="issued">issued from his press."</a><a href="#4">4</a> While a casual inspection of the book reveals no overall change in the sizes of the engravings, the body of the text in the 1829 volume measures one cm longer on the page than in the 1828 volume. The added sheets of letterpress give the 1829 book 48 more pages, visibly increasing its bulk to fulfill its promise of added content.</p>
<p><i>The Keepsake</i> was an octavo volume, available in two sizes; the small silk-bound edition (paper size 15.5 x 9.75 inches) was by far the more popular, priced at 13 shillings, a figure that never increased during the 29 years of <i>Keepsake</i> history. The larger royal octavo volume (paper size 23 x 15 inches) was available by special order, priced at two pounds, 12 shillings, six pence. The engravings were printed and published by a different publisher, Robert Jennings, who advertised the exclusive sale of illustrations from <i>The Keepsake</i> as art. According to advertisements for the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> in magazines such as <i>London Literary Gazette</i> and <i>The Athenaeum</i>, one could purchase plain proofs of the book's illustrations without printed titles for two pounds, two shillings. These were the earliest proofs from a given plate. India proofs of the illustrations were also available, but more expensive because the thinner paper offered a finer impression; these were available with writing for three pounds, three shillings, or without writing for four pounds, four shillings. One illustration on India paper "with the Etchings" (the etched writing that identified the illustration) would <a name="cost">cost five pounds, five shillings.</a><a href="#5">5</a></p>
<p>Size of the book was important for viewing illustrations; one of the major complaints of reviewers was that the engravings were too <a name="small">small for appropriate inspection.</a><a href="#6">6</a> Thus, many books got bigger as the art in the annuals became more important than the literature. By the mid-1830s, market demand for size produced larger volumes, such as <i>Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap-Book</i> and the folio volume <i>Finden's Tableaux</i>. Book size was also important for demonstrating wealth and class, although the preponderance of smaller editions in sales figures seems to indicate that either women readers preferred the red silk binding and smaller size as a code for gendered social acceptance or their economic status did not allow for the heavier expenditure.</p>
<p>While other books of the 1820s might be issued in paper boards for the owner to send to a binder of choice, <i>The Keepsake</i> was a bound product before distribution to the bookseller. The binding was one of many elements of <i>The Keepsake</i> appealing to female readers. Appropriately simple and understated, yet beautiful, the binding's tasteful gilt lettering on the spine served to offset the soft, shiny grain of the fabric cover, clearly feminine. Both the large morocco leather edition and the standard silk <i>Keepsake</i> changed to embossed cloth bindings by the mid-1840s. Michael Sadleir notes that the silks were too delicate for economical book use; surviving copies <a name="confirm">confirm his observation.</a><a href="#7">7</a></p>
<p>Francis Westley, the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i>'s binder, became famous for the elegant bindings of many annuals, such as <i>The Amulet</i>, <i>The Literary Souvenir</i>, and <i>The Gem</i>, which followed <i>The Keepsake</i>'s lead with silk in varying hues. Alaric Watts, editor of <i>The Literary Souvenir</i>, records in February, 1828 that Heath "bought 4,000 yards of watered silk at 3s per yard for the <a name="next">next issue."</a><a href="#8">8</a> The fabric gave the book a strikingly feminine look that also appeared expensive; however, John Heath suggests that the choice of silk for the <i>Keepsake</i> binding was "probably inspired by the well-publicised plight of the Spitalfields silk industry, which faced <a name="ruin">ruin from foreign competition";</a><a href="#9">9</a> this detail serves as an ironic coincidence that an industry's failure would contribute to the success of a "domestic" product: a woman's book covered in dress fabric.</p>
<p>Westley's firm was one of four bookbinders who won medals for excellence at the 1851 Great Exhibition. The Westley binding ticket, "F. Westley, / Binder, / Friar St. / Showmaker Row / near / Doctors Commons" (1828 <i>Keepsake</i>), appeared on the inside cover of each volume. <i>The Penny Magazine</i> of 24 September 1842 features a wood engraving of Westley's binding factory, illustrating a modern production-line system of bookbinding, with workers busily hammering, gluing, and stamping stacks of new books. The annuals became a significant part of Westley's yearly business; his factory contained a special "Annual" shop on an upper floor where workers crafted the seasonal supply of annuals bindings. Other rooms adjacent to the annuals shop provided lettering, ornamentation, and gilting. By 1838, binders had invented new rubber backing techniques, touted in <i>Keepsake</i> ads as "Hancock's Patent Backs" and mentioned in a <i>Literary Gazette</i> review of <i>The Keepsake</i> for 1839: "it opens sweetly and exposes what is good in the engravings most eligibly to view, as it suffers the text to be read in the easiest of <a name="manners">manners."</a><a href="#10">10</a> The same rubber was also being used in women's corsets to tighten the stays.</p>
<h3><a name="essay3">Publishers of <i>The Keepsake</i></a></h3>
<p><a name="essay3">Perhaps the most conservative elements of <i>The Keepsake</i> were its publishers, who considered themselves legally and morally responsible for protecting the public from impropriety. Reading audiences viewed the publisher who placed his name on the imprint of a book as the guardian of middle-class values, but he was also a conservative financial investor. This was not a time to take risks; as Richard Altick reports, one of the reasons book prices remained high in spite of cheaper production methods was the unwillingness of publishers to speculate in the postwar</a> <a name="era">era.</a><a href="#11">11</a></p>
<p>Heath approached Byron's publisher John Murray about his first illustrated book project on 24 October 1826, writing:</p>
<blockquote>I have commenced a work similar to the Forget me Not and the "Literary Souvenir" and I flatter myself that in the Embellishments if [sic] will surpass every Book hitherto published . . . I think so splendid a work as could be brought out by our <u>united exertions</u>, and with your influence, would take the Lead in this sort of publication and we should divide annually very considerable Profit . . . My motive . . . is to get the <u>Profit</u> of my own Labour and Talent . . . to engrave for none but such works as I have an <u>Interest</u> in or, are entirely my <a name="own">own property.</a><a href="#12">12</a></blockquote>
<p>Murray declined, having experienced great financial losses in the panic of 1826.</p>
<p>We know little about Heath's arrangements with <i>The Keepsake</i>'s first publisher, Hurst, Chance &amp; Company (1828-31); an ad for the 1828 volume announces that the book will soon be available to its subscribers, indicating a subscription publishing agreement. Ads for 1829-31 indicate such a method was not continued after the 1828 volume.</p>
<p>Thomas Hurst, of Hurst, Chance and Company, began as a Leeds bookseller, moving to the London book business as a wholesaler supplying country booksellers with various London publications. He joined the Longman firm in 1804 as manager of the country department, but Longman's dissolved the partnership when Hurst drew money on the firm to pay his brother John's bills, according to Thomas Rees, former Longman <a name="partner">partner.</a><a href="#13">13</a> Longman made Thomas Hurst responsible for the bills, buying out his share of the firm with more than 40,000 pounds, an insufficient amount to cover his brother's <a name="debts">debts.</a><a href="#14">14</a> After leaving Longman, Hurst formed Hurst, Chance and Company in 1827, a firm that included future poetry publisher Edward Moxon. Hurst's contacts at Longman's possibly provided Heath with a new publisher when Hurst, Chance and Company went out of business in 1831.</p>
<p>Sales figures for the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> are not available, but an article in <i>The Bookseller</i> reports that "The first volume of <i>The Keepsake</i>, of which from 12,000 to 15,000 copies were sold is said to have cost 11,000 guineas! That for 1829 must have demanded a considerably larger outlay, as nearly 20,000 copies were disposed of in less than a <a name="month">month."</a><a href="#15">15</a> S. C. Hall, editor of <i>The Amulet</i>, estimated that proceeds from the sale of annuals in 1829 totaled 90,000 pounds; according to Hall, various tradespeople involved with producing annuals reaped considerable earnings that year:</p>
<ul>
<li>Authors and editors--6,000 pounds</li>
<li>Painters for Pictures or Copyrights--3,000</li>
<li>Engravers--12,000</li>
<li>Copper-plate Printer--5,000</li>
<li>Letter-press Printers--5,000</li>
<li>Paper Manufacturers--6,000</li>
<li>Book-binders--6,000</li>
<li>Silk Manufacturers and Leather Sellers--500</li>
<li>Advertisements--2,000</li>
<li>Incidental Expenses--1,500</li>
</ul>
_____________________________________<br/>
50,000 pounds<br/>
<p>After the retail booksellers' profits (30,000 pounds), the publishers <a name="got">got 10,000 pounds.</a><a href="#16">16</a> The figure points to a ten percent commission, indicating that all publishers preferred the safety of commission agreements with proprietors of the various annuals, garnering a meager portion of the profits, compared to that of the booksellers.</p>
<h3><a name="essay4">The Campaign for Contributors</a></h3>
<p><a name="essay4">Charles Heath and Frederic Mansel Reynolds set out early in 1828 on an editorial tour to enlist celebrated authors as editors or contributors to the 1829 volume. Courting them like royalty, Heath pursued Thomas Moore, Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey with high fees that would make participation in <i>The Keepsake</i> irresistible. They took Heath's generous offers, while grumbling to their peers about Reynolds's personal manners or his editorial tactics. They worried over ruining their reputations by appearing in a popular women's book such as <i>The Keepsake</i>, nervously guarding any enthusiasm they might have about their contributions. Such attitudes about publication proved difficult barriers to all editors of <i>The Keepsake</i>.</a></p>
<p>Heath first offered Thomas Moore 500 pounds, then 700 pounds to edit the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i>, but Moore flatly refused. Reynolds pursued Moore in early February 1828 for a contribution, going so far as approaching him on the street and forcing a hundred pound check into his pocket for the contribution of a hundred lines. Moore was shocked, and wrote to a friend "The people will soon be annually <a name="mad">mad."</a><a href="#17">17</a> Although attracted to the high fees, Moore remained reluctant to contribute, fearing he would mar his reputation. He writes in his journal on 25 February 1828, "The fact is, it is my name brings these offers, &amp; my name would suffer by accepting <a name="them">them."</a><a href="#18">18</a></p>
<p>Heath's 1828 editorial tour included a trip to the Lakes District in early February where he hoped to get contributions from Wordsworth, who had been overwhelmed with offers from annuals editors. He told Allan Cunningham on 26 February 1828, "I have . . . had applications, I believe from nearly every Editor, but complied with <a name="none">none."</a><a href="#19">19</a> Reynolds, having previously helped Wordsworth with a medical application for an eye ailment, hoped he would respond to the favor by contributing to <i>The Keepsake</i>; the poet fulfilled Reynolds's hope. One hundred guineas was a welcome sum to Wordsworth's ailing finances. Dora Wordsworth wrote to her friend Maria Jane Jewsbury about the offer: "Father could not feel himself justified in refusing so advantageous an offer--degrading enough I confess but necessity has no law, and galling enough but we must pocket our pride sometimes and it is good <a name="for">for us."</a><a href="#20">20</a> Ashamed of selling his work to a popular publication, Wordsworth overcame his ambivalence by necessity.</p>
<p>From his <i>Keepsake</i> contributions Wordsworth received a welcome return of creativity; he had not written a line of poetry in nine months, complaining, "my vein I fear is run out" (<i>Letters</i>, 3:656). Wordsworth needed the money and appreciated the attention of Heath and Reynolds demanding his services but, like Moore, he feared losing control of his reputation; yet, as Peter Manning notes, publication in <i>The Keepsake</i> "rejuvenated Wordsworth, diversifying and lightening his repertory . . . the almost sixty-year-long poet was learning new <a name="tricks">tricks."</a><a href="#21">21</a> <i>The Keepsake</i>'s frankly commercial attitude simply clashed with Wordsworth's reverence for his ideals of literature as a closed sanctuary of the poet priest. As Stephen Gill comments, "These were entrepreneurs, making money. Their assiduity indicated that though his collected volumes might be selling sluggishly, his was now a famous marketable <a name="name">name."</a><a href="#22">22</a> He arrived at a harsh opinion about annuals, partly because of the aggressive pursuit of their editors: "Humility with these <a name="Gentry">Gentry is downright simpleness".</a><a href="#23">23</a> By 4 August 1829, nine months after <i>The Keepsake</i> was published, Wordsworth would have little more to do with annuals, saying, "Those <u>gentlemen</u> have used me between them most scurvily, and I am rightly served for having degraded the Muses by having anything to do with the venal" (387).</p>
<p>After more than nine months of haggling, the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> appeared in November 1828 with Reynolds's <a href="/editions/lel/preftxt.htm">Preface</a> proclaiming, "such a list of authors has been obtained as perhaps never before graced the pages of any one volume of <u>original</u> contributions" (iv). Competition daunted Heath's efforts to bring his <i>Keepsake</i> into a library of respectable volumes of literature; reviewers grouped <i>The Keepsake</i> with the multitude of other annuals in their columns, comparing titles and generalizing about their various contributors. After their experiences with the "great" male authors, Heath and Reynolds evidently decided to forego the high fees paid to men such as Wordsworth and Moore, instead enlisting more aristocratic and women authors, as well as women editors.</p>
<h3><a name="essay5">Advertising and Marketing <i>The Keepsake</i></a></h3>
<p><a name="essay5"><i>The Keepsake</i> was one of many literary annuals competing in a brisk, seasonal market every year. Rudolph Ackermann's <i>Forget-Me-Not</i> was the first English annual in the fall of 1822, but publishers soon recognized the commercial opportunities of a literary book joined with fine arts; an article in <i>The Bookseller</i> estimates sales of earlier volumes of annuals at fifteen to twenty thousand</a> <a name="copies">copies.</a><a href="#24">24</a> In fall of 1823 appeared <i>Friendship's Offering</i> and Alaric Watts's <i>Literary Souvenir</i>, and the race for literary gift buyers was on, with many new titles appearing by the time the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> appeared in November, 1828; as Bradford Allen Booth reports: "The single annual for 1823 was succeeded by three for 1824 and nine for 1825. For nearly a decade the number steadily increased; in 1831, booksellers' shelves bulged <a name="with">with sixty-two Tokens of Affection, Pledges of Friendship, and Gems of Loveliness."</a><a href="#25">25</a></p>
<p>Such competition required shrewd imaging by proprietor Charles Heath and his editors that would place <i>The Keepsake</i> in a unique position among the many offerings. Literary annuals were generally a middle-class phenomenon; however, <i>The Keepsake</i> seduced its middle-class women readers with elegant illustrations of aristocratic women and notions of owning a book suitable for any gentleman's library. Romantic literature, celebrity contributors, and a bigger, more ostentatious physical presentation helped advance The <i>Keepsake</i> to such a position of popularity that other annuals soon began borrowing its name in titles such as <i>The Biblical Keepsake</i> (1835), <i>The Biographical Keepsake</i> (1830), <i>The Christian Keepsake</i> (1835), <i>Holiday Keepsake</i> (1840), <i>Historical Keepsake</i> (1836), <i>Hibernian Keepsake</i> (1832), <i>The Midsummer Keepsake</i> (1834), and many others. Indeed, later in the century the word "keepsake" became a generic term for all literary annuals.</p>
<p>Heath and Reynolds aggressively pursued literary celebrities for the 1829 volume in an attempt to market <i>The Keepsake</i> as high literature, boldly announcing production costs to create the notion that readers were getting a bargain, justifying the extra shilling paid for <i>The Keepsake</i> over other annuals. Reynolds claims in his <a href="/editions/lel/preftxt.htm">1829 Preface</a>: "In prosecution of this design, and on the various departments of <i>The Keepsake</i>, the enormous sum of eleven thousand guineas has been expended" (iii). By revealing the high fees in his Preface, Reynolds conveys an image of <i>The Keepsake</i> as an elaborate, luxurious production, tapping into middle-class desires to possess the accoutrements of class, a bargain at 13 shillings.</p>
<p>Advertising in literary periodicals such as <i>The Athenaeum</i> and <i>The London Literary Gazette</i> became an essential element of <i>The Keepsake</i>'s financial success each year from its introduction in December 1827 until the mid-40s, when Heath began to lose money on his many publishing projects.</p>
<p>Normally, advertising for <i>The Keepsake</i> began in October, later in the season than many other aggressively marketed annuals; <i>The Literary Souvenir</i> and <i>Winter's Wreath</i> ads sometimes appeared in periodicals such as the <i>Athenaeum</i> and <i>The Literary Gazette</i> as early as September. <i>Keepsake</i> periodical ads were small in its first year, Hurst sharing advertising expenses with Robert Jennings, who published the engraved illustrations. Jennings purchased ads that exclusively featured print sales. The first 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> ad in <i>The Athenaeum</i> appears on Wednesday 22 October, 1828, boasting the success of the debut volume:</p>
<blockquote>The extraordinary success of <i>The Keepsake</i> of last year, has induced the Proprietor, in the hope of meriting the increased patronage he anticipates, to spare no exertion nor expenditure, however immense, in the formation of his present volume; and to secure for it the assistance of so many Authors of the highest eminence, that he ventures to assert, such a List of Contributors has never before been presented to the Public. (830)</blockquote>
<p>Promotion of the aggressive campaign for contributors conducted that year by Heath and Reynolds for the 1829 volume establishes a publishing event of colossal importance. The ad proudly features the list of contributors, promising 19 "Embellishments, . . . considerably increased in size, and, consequently, in value" (<i>Keepsake</i> 830). Also published are names of artists whose works are engraved for the 1829 <i>Keepsake</i>, as well as the engravers and the printer Thomas Davison, indicating the increasing celebrity status of engravers and production specialists. The language in <i>Keepsake</i> ads balances the proper degree of reserve with its high profile position. Words such as "eminence" and "patronage" suggest an oldworldly courtesy and exclusivity.</p>
<h3><a name="essay6">Illustrating <i>The Keepsake</i></a></h3>
<p><a name="essay6">Most critics agreed that <i>Keepsake</i> illustrations were its finest feature; other critics attacked the book's artistic aesthetics for many of the same reasons they scorned its literary contents. They complained about The <i>Keepsake</i>'s sentimental portraits of women and children, romantic escapades, rural vistas, and exotic scenes from foreign lands. One <i>Fraser's</i> reviewer (August 1830) barely tolerates such tastes, classifying annuals art as "a little boudoir school, which, should it not be suffered to interfere, as there is some danger of its doing, with the more manly styles of art, may be tolerated as harmless--perhaps commended</a> <a name="as">as useful."</a><a href="#26">26</a></p>
<p>Indeed, <i>Keepsake</i> engravings enabled women to participate in the new art appreciation movement. Print sellers hawking proofs from the annuals displayed their goods on London street corners; some sold freestanding portfolio supports to display prints in one's drawing room. Art societies formed to educate the public, and new galleries, such as the National Gallery, sponsored exhibitions. Eleanor Jamieson credits literary annuals for their part in the popularization process:</p>
<blockquote>Steel engraving meant that for the first time, the finest art of the country could be reproduced at a reasonable price, and when such reproductions were diffused through the huge circulation of the annuals, they fostered in the general public an appreciation of painting never hitherto <a name="known">known.</a><a href="#27">27</a></blockquote>
<p><i>The Keepsake</i> was at the center of this popularization process, educating women by providing them with engravings of elegant paintings by famous artists from the Royal Academy such as J. M. W. Turner, whose works appeared in <i>Keepsake</i> volumes from 1828-37; engraved landscape paintings such as "Florence" (1828), "The Lake of Albano" and <a href="/sites/default/files/imported/editions/lel/lago.gif">"The Lago Maggiore"</a> (1829), "Saumur" and "Nantes" (1830), and "Ehrenbreitstein" (1833) added continental flavor to <i>The Keepsake</i>. Other Royal Academy artists included Edwin Landseer (<a href="/editions/lel/georgpic.htm">"The Duchess of Bedford,"</a> 1829), Thomas Stothard ("The Garden of Boccaccio," 1829), and A. E. Chalon ("Isabella and Gertrude," 1830).</p>
<p>Production of <i>Keepsake</i> illustrations involved many different professionals highly influenced by the new women readers. <i>The Keepsake</i> and other annuals promoted the popularity of steel-plate engravings for book illustration when American engineer and engraver Jacob Perkins invented the new technique, patented in <a name="1819">1819.</a><a href="#28">28</a> The copper-plate processes used before this were, according to Marjorie Plant, "very expensive both to produce and to print, 10 pounds to 20 pounds being the quite normal cost of a single <a name="plate">plate."</a><a href="#29">29</a> Because the new steel plates were harder, they could survive much larger editions.</p>
<p>William Henry McQueen had a crucial role as plate printer of <i>The Keepsake</i>'s engravings. Anthony Dyson discusses the importance of such a technician:</p>
<blockquote>Where the intaglio printer was concerned, the network of contacts was perhaps particularly elaborate. Everybody, from publisher to plate-polisher, was in close touch with him. Artist, engraver, publisher, and dealer kept a sharply vigilant eye upon his activities, since success ultimately hinged on his <a name="skill">skill.</a><a href="#30">30</a></blockquote>
<p>Names of plate printers often do not appear on plates, in spite of their importance; however, McQueen's name appears on <i>Keepsake</i> engravings throughout the 1830s. He was awarded a First Class Medal at the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle, although excluded from the printing awards at the 1851 Great Exhibition in England for unknown reasons.</p>
<p>The first literary annual to use steel-plate engravings was Rudolph Ackermann's <i>Forget-Me-Not</i> in 1825, but Charles Heath was using the process for book illustrations as early as 1820, with Thomas Campbell's <i>Pleasures of <a name="Hope">Hope.</a></i><a href="#31">31</a> Heath became famous for his work as an engraver in various publications, providing engravings for several annuals, including the Forget-Me-Not in 1825 and 1826, the Amulet for 1826, and The Literary Souvenir for 1826 and <a name="1827">1827.</a><a href="#32">32</a> According to one observer in 1858, "The success of the Literary Souvenir, to which, indeed, the masterly engravings of Chas. Heath had in some degree contributed, induced him to attempt a work of the same kind, upon a larger and more important scale, for his own benefit. A more formidable rival could hardly have entered the <a name="field">field."</a><a href="#33">33</a> Soon the Heath family engravers developed into a major business that employed London's finest engravers. A single plate might involve the skills of several artisans, according to John Heath, who writes that the 1829 Keepsake illustration of Mrs. Peel</p>
<blockquote>bears the signature of Charles Heath, but a very early proof copy is lettered in manuscript: "Lane reduced, Goodyear etchd [sic] figure, Webb etchd fur and feathers, J. H. Watt drapery and hat, Rhodes worked up hat feathers, D. Smith background, and C. Heath <a name="flesh">flesh."</a><a href="#34">34</a></blockquote>
<p>Although marketed as a delicately handcrafted book, this proof copy betrays <i>The Keepsake</i> as a frankly commercial product, engraved in a factory by line of technicians.</p>
<p>Heath developed special working relationships with artists Sir Thomas Lawrence and J. M. W. Turner. Lawrence, president of the Royal Academy, signed an agreement in 1822 with publishers Hurst &amp; Robinson, allowing Heath to engrave his pictures for Hurst's publications. According to George Somes Layard, Hurst and Robinson agreed to pay Lawrence 3,000 pounds a year for two years, with a seven-year <a name="option">option.</a><a href="#35">35</a> Heath, deeply involved in the engraving business, lost money when Hurst &amp; Robinson went bankrupt and sold his collection of engravings at auction in May <a name="1826">1826;</a><a href="#36">36</a> however, his relationship with Lawrence evidently remained intact, for Lawrence's beautiful portraits appear as <i>Keepsake</i> frontispieces in 1828, 1829, and 1835. Heath commissioned 120 pictures for various book projects from Turner, who contributed 17 illustrations for <i>The Keepsake</i> from 1828-37, including two for the 1829 volume.</p>
<p>As a businessman, Charles Heath was an unlikely promoter for a book that, on its surface, promoted propriety. As the illegitimate child of engraver James Heath and his common-law wife, Charles learned a trade that would make his fortune, but overspeculation caused him to lose that fortune several times. Financial disaster first threatened Heath in 1821, and his final bankruptcy in 1841 left him owing creditors 2030 pounds at his death in 1848; by 1847 he had invested in at least 15 book projects. In spite of his irrational business speculations, Heath's reputation soared among book publishers.</p>
<p>By far the most expensive element of <i>Keepsake</i> production, Heath's illustrations became so admired that engravers gained the celebrity status of artists, earning high fees for their work. Artist John Martin's biographer, Thomas Balston, cites fees as high as "30 guineas to as much as 150 or 180" guineas for engravers of Martin's <a name="work">work.</a><a href="#37">37</a> Heath shared <i>Keepsake</i> production expenses from 1828-31 with print seller Robert Jennings, who appears on the imprint with publishers Hurst, Chance &amp; Company. These commercial partnerships were profitable for both parties; print sellers experienced brisk sales with engravings in various proof stages, while the arrangement allowed Heath to display them in <i>The Keepsake</i>.</p>
<p>Steel-plate engraving signified refinement, contributing to <i>The Keepsake</i>'s expensive image. Annuals illustrators rarely used lithography, a cheaper illustration method soon extremely popular with other book illustrators; in a letter to publisher J. O. Robinson on 31 July 1824, Alaric Watts, editor of <i>The Literary Souvenir</i>, quips:</p>
<blockquote>Books, like puddings, are often made of excellent materials, and,--marred in the making. The author says he has some drawings "which might be lithographed." Lithography is damnation to any respectable book. If found worth engraving, they should be slightly <a name="etched">etched.</a><a href="#38">38</a></blockquote>
<p>Until its final years in the 1850s, <i>The Keepsake</i> avoided any implication of mass reproduction, while ironically demonstrating some of the latest techniques in such production.</p>
<h3><a name="essay7">Common Themes of <i>The Keepsake</i></a></h3>
<p><a name="essay7">Politics, current events, outwardly radical social opinions, and crude language were unacceptable in <i>The Keepsake</i>. Editors made their volume appear sanitized for drawing-room display and family reading by carefully choosing poetry, prose, and illustrations that would satisfy conservative readers; indeed, a great deal of <i>Keepsake</i> material satisfies the most stringent inspection for propriety. However, while pictures of women and children, animals, nature scenes, and romantic embraces in <i>The Keepsake</i> seem innocent, they frequently suggest themes that threaten to disturb the carefully woven fabric of domesticity.</a></p>
<p>A reader who came to <i>The Keepsake</i> for beauty, fashion, art, and a reverence for literature opened herself to daring pictures and stories about Byronic women heroes, sensuous escapades with hot-blooded Italian lovers, terrifying accounts of abusive husbands who leave women desperate and alone, and mystical worlds where women acquire and use positions of power. Women could read about other women who acted out middle-class fantasies, such as the Gothic heroine who escapes a terrifying male presence, and the "bad" woman who angrily avenges social injustice. By reading about the unfortunate bride, the fallen angel, and the victims of family abuse, women sharing those experiences knew they were not alone. <i>Keepsake</i> writers bonded with their readers through the imagination, a boundless space of emotion that connects experience with fantasy in a very personal, indefinable way.</p>
<p>For women, life usually meant marriage and a permanent home in their immediate geographical region. When a woman lost a suitable partner for marriage, she potentially lost her security, for she had few of the outlets available to men for self-sufficiency, and the separation of spheres demanded that she stay in her domestic circle or face social ostracism. L. E. L.'s life as an independent, single woman working in London is a testament to such restrictions; Like <a href="/editions/lel/georgpic.htm">Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford</a>, whose prtrait L.E.L. describes in the poem featured in a our study, rumors of romantic interests often dominated public perceptions of personal success.</p>
<p>Domestic tranquility and acceptance of woman's social position might be the ideal, but <i>Keepsake</i> stories and poems frequently expose the unreliability of such assumptions. More common are tales about unhappy or arranged marriages, the lack of opportunities for women to support their own families, the damage wrought by society's double standard, the self-destructive effects of jealousy caused by competition in the marriage market, the fate of fallen women, society's neglect of laboring women, the depressing status of orphans and single women, mental and emotional abuse of women by men, and the sickness of a class-bound society regulated by a hierarchy that enclosed women in the home appear in most <i>Keepsake</i> volumes. Examples of these themes can be found in 1829 <i>Keepsake</i> tales such as "The Victim Bride," by W. H. Harrison; "Clorinda: or the Necklace of Pearl," by an anonymous author; "The Half-Brothers," by John and Michael Banim; Mary Shelley's "The Sisters of Albano" and "Ferdinando Eboli." These works at times illuminate the meanings of <i>Keepsake</i> selections discussed in these essays and modify their meanings at others.</p>
<p>However subversive these themes may appear, <i>Keepsake</i> authors rarely accomplished a complete removal from the rules of propriety; moral guardians, fearing the influences of imaginative literature, formulated strict boundaries of domestic ideology to keep women at home in their minds as well as within the domestic circle. <i>Keepsake</i> authors could only provide a temporary imaginative escape for women readers who would be helpless to find a cure for the domestic illness of their society for many decades. Modern critics wishing to learn more about women's history will find a store of information about these important aspects of the middle-class woman's life in <i>Keepsake</i> volumes.</p>
<h3><a name="essay1">List of Editors and Publishers for <i>The Keepsake</i> 1828-57</a></h3>
<p><a name="essay1">1828<br/>
Hurst, Chance &amp; Co., &amp; Robert Jennings, London<br/>
Editor William Harrison Ainsworth<br/></a></p>
<p>1829<br/>
Hurst, Chance &amp; Co., and Robert Jennings, London<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1830<br/>
Hurst, Chance &amp; Co., and Robert Jennings, London<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1831<br/>
Hurst Chance &amp; Co., and Jennings and Chaplin, London<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1832<br/>
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, London<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1833<br/>
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Rittner and Goupill, Paris<br/>
Charles Jugil, Frankfort<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1834<br/>
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Rittner and Goupill, Paris<br/>
A. Asher, Berlin<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1835<br/>
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Rittner and Goupil, Paris<br/>
A. Asher, Berlin<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1836<br/>
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Rittner and Goupil, Paris<br/>
A. Asher, Berlin<br/>
Editor Caroline Norton<br/></p>
<p>1837<br/>
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Delloy and Co., Paris<br/>
Editor Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley<br/></p>
<p>1838<br/>
Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Delloy &amp; Co., Paris<br/>
Editor anonymous (Reynolds)<br/></p>
<p>1839<br/>
Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Delloy &amp; Co., Paris<br/>
Editor Frederic Mansel Reynolds<br/></p>
<p>1840<br/>
Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Appleton &amp; Co., New York<br/>
Fisher &amp; Co., Paris<br/>
Editor Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley<br/></p>
<p>1841<br/>
Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Appleton and Co., New York<br/>
Fisher and Co., Paris<br/>
Editor the Countess of Blessington<br/></p>
<p>1842<br/>
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman<br/>
Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia<br/>
Fisher and Co., Paris<br/>
Editor the Countess of Blessington<br/></p>
<p>1843<br/>
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman<br/>
Appleton and Co., New York<br/>
Aubert and Co., Paris<br/>
T. O. Weigel, Leipsic<br/>
Editor the Countess of Blessington<br/></p>
<p>1844<br/>
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Appleton &amp; Co., New York<br/>
L. Curmer and Aubert and Co., Paris<br/>
T. O. Weigel, Leipzig<br/>
Editor the Countess of Blessington<br/></p>
<p>1845-47<br/>
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, London<br/>
Appleton and Co., New York<br/>
Fisher, Son, and Co., Paris<br/>
T. O. Weigel, Leipzig<br/>
Editor the Countess of Blessington<br/></p>
<p>1848-49<br/>
David Bogue, London<br/>
Appleton and Co., New York<br/>
H. Mandeville, Paris<br/>
Editor the Countess of Blessington<br/></p>
<p>1850-57<br/>
David Bogue, London<br/>
Appleton and Co., New York<br/>
H. Mandeville, Paris<br/>
Editor Marguerite Power<br/></p>
<hr/>
<center>
<h2>Notes</h2>
</center>
<a name="1">1. Parts of this essay appeared previously in <i>Studies in the Literary Imagination</i> 30.1 (Spring 1997): 35-47 and in <i>The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America</i> 88.2 (June 1994): 206-16.</a> <a href="#The">Return to Essay</a>
<p><a name="2">2. Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), <i>Middlemarch</i> (London: Penguin, 1985), 302.</a> <a href="#girl.">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="3">3. Reynolds, Preface to <i>The Keepsake</i> for 1829 (London: Hurst, 1828), iv-v.</a> <a href="#gilding">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="4">4. Timperley, <i>A Dictionary of Printers and Printing</i> (London: Johnson, 1839), 919.</a> <a href="#issued">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="5">5. See the advertisement for the <i>Keepsake</i> for 1829, in <i>The Athenaeum</i> 52 (22 Oct. 1828): 830.</a> <a href="#cost">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="6">6. See "Strictures on Art and Exhibitions," <i>Fraser's Magazine</i> 2: 7 (Aug. 1830): 93-110.</a> <a href="#small">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="7">7. Sadleir, <i>The Evolution of Publishers' Binding Styles, 1770-1900</i> (London: Constable, 1930), 40.</a> <a href="#confirm">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="8">8. Watts, quoted in Sadleir, 40.</a> <a href="#next">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="9">9. Heath, <i>The Heath Family Engravers 1779-1878</i> (Hants: Scolar Press, 1993), 2: 55.</a> <a href="#ruin">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="10">10. Review of <i>The Keepsake</i> for 1839, in <i>The Literary Gazette</i> 1137 (3 Nov. 1838): 691.</a> <a href="#manners">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="11">11. Altick, <i>The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800-1900</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 260.</a> <a href="#era">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="12">12. Heath, <i>The Heath Family Engravers</i>, 24.</a> <a href="#own">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="13">13. Rees, "Reminiscences of Literary London from 1779 to 1853," in <i>The English Book Trade 1660-1853</i> (New York: Garland, 1974), 45.</a> <a href="#partner">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="14">14. Rees, "Reminiscences," 47.</a> <a href="#debts">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="15">15. "The Annuals of Former Days," <i>The Bookseller</i> 1 (29 Nov. 1858): 498.</a> <a href="#month">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="16">16. Hall, quoted in "The Annuals of Former Days," 493.</a> <a href="#got">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="17">17. Moore, <i>Notes from the Letters of Thomas Moore to His Music Publisher, James Power</i> (New York: Redfield, n.d.), 144.</a> <a href="#mad">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="18">18. Moore, <i>The Journal of Thomas Moore</i>, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983), 3: 1125.</a> <a href="#them">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="19">19. Wordsworth, <i>The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, The Later Years, Part I, 1821-28</i>, 2nd ed., ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 3: 583.</a> <a href="#none">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="20">20. Dora Wordsworth, quoted in <i>The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, The Later Years</i>, 3: 580.</a> <a href="#for">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="21">21. Manning, "Wordsworth in <i>The Keepsake</i>, 1829," in <i>Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing and Reading Practices</i>, eds. John O. Jordan and Robert L. Patten (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 62.</a> <a href="#tricks">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="22">22. Gill, <i>William Wordsworth: A Life</i>(Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 350.</a> <a href="#name">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="23">23. This quotation and the one that follows it are from a different edition of letters than the one previously cited. They are from Wordsworth, <i>The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Laters Years, Vol. 1: 1821-30</i>, ed. Ernest De Selincourt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), 351.</a><a href="#Gentry">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="24">24. "The Annuals of Former Days," 496.</a> <a href="#copies">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="25">25. Bradford Allen Booth, in <i>A Cabinet of Gems</i>, ed. Bradford Allen Booth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1938), 4-6.</a> <a href="#with">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="26">26. "Strictures on Art and Exhibitions," 94.</a> <a href="#as">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="27">27. Jamieson, "The Binding Styles of the Gift Books and Annuals," in <i>Frederick W. Faxon, Literary Annuals and Gift Books: A Bibliography 1823-1903</i> (1912; rpt. Middlesex: Private Libraries Association, 1973), 5.</a> <a href="#known">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="28">28. John Ford, <i>Ackermann, 1783-1983: The Business of Art</i> (London: Ackermann, 1983), 65.</a> <a href="#1819">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="29">29. Plant, <i>The English Book Trade</i> (London: Allen, 1965), 309.</a> <a href="#plate">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="30">30. Dyson, <i>Pictures to Print: The Nineteenth-Century Engraving Trade</i> (London: Farrand, c. 1984), 37.</a> <a href="#skill">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="31">31. Heath, <i>The Heath Family Engravers</i>, 21.</a> <a href="#Hope">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="32">32. Ibid., 24.</a> <a href="#1827">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="33">33. "The Annuals of Former Days," 497.</a> <a href="#field">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="34">34. Heath, <i>op. cit.</i>, 58.</a> <a href="#flesh">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="35">35. Layard, <i>Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-Bag</i> (New York: Longman, 1906), 171.</a> <a href="#option">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="36">36. "Charles Heath," <i>DNB</i> (1917), 9: 341.</a> <a href="#1826">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="37">37. Balston, <i>John Martin 1789-1854: His Life and Works</i> (London: Duckworth, 1947), 92.</a> <a href="#work">Return to Essay</a></p>
<p><a name="38">38. Watts, <i>Alaric Watts: A Narrative of His Life</i> (London: Bentley, 1884), 1:230.</a> <a href="#etched">Return to Essay</a></p></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31535">Electronic Editions</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/editions/lel/index.html">&quot;Verses&quot; and The Keepsake for 1829 </a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Section:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/section/editions/lels-verses-and-the-keepsake-for-1829" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">L.E.L.&#039;s &#039;Verses&#039; and The Keepsake for 1829</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/leeds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Leeds</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/paris" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Paris</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/india" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">India</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-organization-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Organization:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/organization/royal-academy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Royal Academy</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/thomas-moore" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Moore</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/frederic-mansel-reynolds" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Frederic Mansel Reynolds</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/j-m-w-turner-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">J. M. W. Turner</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/robert-jennings" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert Jennings</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-henry-mcqueen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Henry McQueen</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/thomas-rees" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Rees</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/francis-westley" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Francis Westley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/ned-plymdale" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ned Plymdale</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/charles-heath" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charles Heath</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/george-eliot" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">George Eliot</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/thomas-davison" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Davison</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/walter-scott" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Walter Scott</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-heath" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Heath</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/letitia-elizabeth-landon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Letitia Elizabeth Landon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/thomas-hurst" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Hurst</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-murray" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Murray</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/felicia-dorothea-hemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Felicia Dorothea Hemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/stephen-gill" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Stephen Gill</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/new-york" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New York</a></li></ul></section>Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:58:25 +0000rc-admin15508 at http://www.rc.umd.edu